[Python-Dev] Alternative to -z option

[Paul Moore]

On 13/07/07, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> After thinking about it some more, I suggest that instead of using a
> special option to execute a zipfile, we simply always get an importer
> for the script filename.  If the importer is imp.NullImporter, then
> we do normal script processing.  Otherwise, we set set sys.path[0] =
> sys.argv[0] = script, and import __main__.
>
> This will support zipfiles and directories, Windows and Unix, even
> using "env" (since no option to the interpreter is required).
>
> Thoughts?

Let me get this right: if I had a one-liner hello.py (containing the
line print "Hello, world") all I'd need to do is

(1) rename hello.py to __main__.py
(2) zip hello.zip __main__.py.

Then,

    python hello.zip

would work exactly as python hello.py did previously?

Sounds plausible. I'm not entirely clear on the details of the code
needed (long day!) - would you be willing to produce a patch? (One
major point in favour of the -z patch is that it exists already!)

Paul.