[New-bugs-announce] [issue17551] Windows - accessing drive with nothing mounted forces user interaction

[Bob Alexander]

New submission from Bob Alexander:

Attempting to use os.path.exists on a Windows drive that is a mobile device mount point with nothing mounted pops up a dialog asking to insert a device. This makes it impossible to search a set of drives for a specific file without the possibility of unnecessary user interaction -- for example looking for the drive that has a specific flash drive inserted.

This behavior is likely related to bug 9035 regarding "os.path.ismount" behavior on Windows.

The more correct behavior (IMO) would be to quietly return exists=False for drives with nothing mounted. In fact, I tried the same operation with Java and Ruby programs, and both simply return false with no popup.

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components: Library (Lib)
messages: 185281
nosy: bobjalex
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Windows - accessing drive with nothing mounted forces user interaction
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.3

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue17551>
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