[Pythonmac-SIG] Beginner's query: Path configuration in OS X 10.3

[Chris Barker]

Bob Ippolito wrote:
> On Feb 12, 2004, at 2:54 PM, Jeffrey Dean wrote:
>> I'm running Python 2.3 in Mac OS X 10.3.2

How are you running it?

> files to that directory, so I've put my exercise modules in
>> /Users/Myname/Documents/Python. How the heck do I get Python to look 
>> there
>> for modules to import them?

> The site-packages in /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework is a 
> symlink to /Library/Python/2.3, which should be writable by anyone in 
> the admin group.
> 
> Python also looks in the Library/Python/2.3/site-packages location 
> inside your home folder

As the names indicate, those are good places to put what might be called 
a "library" of python modules--ones you want to use use from various 
other python scripts.

For just playing around, learning, and developing new code, you probably 
want to put the *.py files wherever in your home folder makes sense to you.

What you want to do is make the "working directory", the same as the one 
you are , well, working in. Python will look in the working directory 
for modules.

I generally run python from the command line in Terminal, so I first cd 
to the directory my files are in, then run python. (I found a nifty 
script on the web that puts a button on the finder that will launch a 
terminal in the directory currently selected, which makes this easy)

If you're using the IDE, I'm pretty sure there is a way to set the 
working directory, but I don't recall what it is at the moment. I 
abandoned the IDE as soon as OS-X gave me a command line.

You can also set the working directory from within Python with:

os.chdir(path)

I'm kind of a Linux geek, but this seems like the logical way to do 
things to me.

-Chris















-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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