What's before site.py that initializes sys.path

[Emile van Sebille]

I've found the source of my duplicate by virtue of case sys.path entries
under Win9x.  I found PythonPath referenced in the install.log :

RegDB Key: Software\Python\PythonCore\1.5\PythonPath
RegDB Val: D:\Program Files\Python\Lib\plat-win;D:\Program
Files\Python\Lib;D:\Program Files\Python\DLLs;D:\Program
Files\Python\Lib\lib-tk

After clearing the value using regedit, I now get:

[Windows 95] D:\Program Files\Python>python
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import sys
>>> for i in sys.path : i
...
''
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\DLLs'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\lib'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\lib\\plat-win'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\lib\\lib-tk'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON'
>>>

I've got a residual path problem with Idle, but I haven't dug into that yet:

Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import sys
>>> for i in sys.path : i

'D:\\Program Files\\Python\\Tools\\idle'
'D:\\PROGRA~1\\PYTHON\\TOOLS\\IDLE'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\DLLs'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\lib'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\lib\\plat-win'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON\\lib\\lib-tk'
'D:\\PROGRAM FILES\\PYTHON'
>>>

I don't have a PythonPath environment variable set, nor any *.pth files.  At
this point, I'm assuming that the five base entries of sys.path are set in
the source C code, and that I'll need to load the source tree and look there
to find where things start.

Until I located the registry entry, I'd patched site.py to strip out the
duplicates, but couldn't find an obvious way to transform the tilde
referenced directories.  Is there a way to know full path name of
'D:\\PROGRA~1\\PYTHON\\TOOLS\\IDLE' vs 'D:\\PROGRA~2\\PYTHON\\TOOLS\\IDLE' ?

Cut-my-path-search-time-by-two-hoping-to-make-it-three'ly yrs

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com