[Python-Dev] 3.2.1 encoding surprise

[R. David Murray]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:27:31 +1000, Mark Hammond <skippy.hammond at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/07/2011 10:18 AM, Glenn Linderman wrote:
> > On 7/20/2011 5:07 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Ethan Furman<ethan at stoneleaf.us>  wrote:
> >>> I would say that would be a cool enhancement, as it could save a bit of
> >>> typing, but I think the launcher is quite useful even without path
> >>> traversal.
> >> Two related points:
> >>
> >> 1. Walking PATH isn't necessary, but the cwd of the py process should
> >> be inherited from the shell correctly. If it is, then 'py foo.py'
> >> shouldn't need path traversal, it should just look in the current
> >> directory. Using PATHEXT to turn 'foo.py' directly into an executable
> >> command on PATH from any directory is different and out of scope for
> >> the launcher.
> >
> > Sorry, I disagree that it is out of scope.  Looking in the current
> > directory is fine, when the script is there, but my scripts are seldom
> > in my data directories, and I want to run scripts (from the PATH) on
> > data that is in the CWD.  I consider this a _very common_ use case for
> > using scripts/programs, but then if you want to use py from the command
> > line to tweak which version of Python gets used to execute the script
> > (if the default one didn't work, for example, and you want to try a
> > different one), then suddenly, you have to find the path to the script,
> > and specify it explicitly.
> 
> The arguments above apply equally to python.exe.  The launcher's job is 
> to find an appropriate python.exe and launch it, not to locate the 
> scripts and all the command-line parsing that would entail.  If you want 
> this feature you should advocate for it to be added to Python itself and 
> it will then automatically work in the launcher too.

Indeed.  If I want to run a script with a different python version
on a unix-like system, I need to know the path to said script.
We're trying to make python as easy to use on Windows as it is on Unix.
If find-script-on-path is considered a worthwhile feature, then as Mark
said it should be added to base Python (on all platforms), not special-cased
in the Windows launcher.

--
R. David Murray           http://www.bitdance.com