organizing your scripts, with plenty of re-use

Steven D'Aprano steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au
Sun Oct 11 03:48:44 EDT 2009


On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:44:18 -0300, Gabriel Genellina wrote:

>>> The frustrating thing, for me, is that all these requirements are met
>>> if you leave the scripts in jumbled into a flat directory.
>>
>> I bet that's not true. I bet that they Just Work only if the user cd's
>> into the directory first. In other words, if you have all your scripts
>> in the directory /tools/mycompany/bin/scripts, this will work:
>>
>> $ cd /tools/mycompany/bin/scripts
>> $ animals.py
>>
>> but this won't:
>>
>> $ cd /home/username
>> $ /tools/mycompany/bin/scripts/animals.py
>>
>>
>> In the first case, it works because the current working directory is
>> included in the PYTHONPATH, and all the modules you need are there. In
>> the second, it doesn't because the modules aren't in either the current
>> directory or any other directory in the PYTHONPATH.
>>
>> That's my prediction.
> 
> Mmm, I predict you won't have much success in your new fortune teller
> career... :)
> You got it backwards. At least on Windows, the current directory *isn't*
> on the Python path, but the directory containing the script *is*
> included. So both alternatives above work.

Oops. Serves me right for making what I thought was a sure bet before 
testing :)

It's the same for Linux too, and it seems to hold at least back to Python 
1.5. On the ignominy of it all! I guess I'll have to give up the fortune-
telling and get a proper job :(




-- 
Steven



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