Discussion on some Code Issues

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 4:17 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <mailman.1922.1341767824.4697.python-list at python.org>,
>  Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> open("doc1.txt","r")
>>
>> Python will look for a file called doc1.txt in the directory you run
>> the script from (which is often going to be the same directory as your
>> .py program).
>
> Well, to pick a nit, the file will be looked for in the current working
> directory.  This may or may not be the directory you ran your script
> from.  Your script could have executed chdir() between the time you
> started it and you tried to open the file.
>
> To pick another nit, it's misleading to say, "Python will look for...".
> This implies that Python somehow gets involved in pathname resolution,
> when it doesn't.  Python just passes paths to the operating system as
> opaque strings, and the OS does all the magic of figuring out what that
> string means.

Two perfectly accurate nitpicks. And of course, there's a million and
one other things that could happen in between, too, including
possibilities of the current directory not even existing and so on. I
merely oversimplified in the hopes of giving a one-paragraph
explanation of what it means to not put a path name in your open()
call :) It's like the difference between reminder text on a Magic: The
Gathering card and the actual entries in the Comprehensive Rules.
Perfect example is the "Madness" ability - the reminder text explains
the ability, but uses language that actually is quite incorrect. It's
a better explanation, though.

Am I overanalyzing this? Yeah, probably...

ChrisA