[Python-Dev] Segmentaion fault with wrongly set PYTHONPATH on Windows

[anatoly techtonik]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 7:37 PM, Christian Heimes <christian at python.org> wrote:
> Am 22.10.2012 18:26, schrieb anatoly techtonik:
>> I don't know what is abort() on Linux, but I believe coredumps is not
>> something you want to get while setting some environment variable. On
>> Windows it outputs a standard crash dialog box, which immediately
>> raises questions about Python stability and potential exploitability
>> in this direction.
>
> abort() is a C stdlib function that kills the current process with
> SGIABRT or similar. It's designed to draw attention to a fatal error.
>
> Are you proposing that Python should rather use _exit() than abort()
> here? Both forcedly shut down the process immediately.

I am not a C coder and don't have any core Unix programming
background. If Python is unable to start because it can not find its
libraries, I prefer an explanative error message with standard system
error code. Even if it is Fatal Python error - this case is still in
user land and should be fixed normally. The error message could be
improved though. Right now I get:

E:\>python
Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: unable to load the file system codec
ImportError: No module named 'encodings'

This could be improved to:

Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: unable to find module named 'encodings'
in 'C:\'

--
anatoly t.