[Pythonmac-SIG] py2app crash if path contains a colon

[Ronald Oussoren]

Could either of you file a bug about this (the sys.path mangling when there's a colon in the directory that contains the executable) on python's SF tracker? Preferably including decription of how to reproduce this. 

Bob, I've created a directory 'test:dir' and added a script named 'test.py' in that directory that prints sys.path. If I run 'python test:dir/test.py' sys.path[0] looks correct (including the colon in test:dir).

Ronald
 
On Wednesday, June 14, 2006, at 10:21AM, Bob Ippolito <bob at redivi.com> wrote:

>On Jun 12, 2006, at 4:52 PM, Bob Swerdlow wrote:
>
>> Hi, our app is using py2app 0.2.1 and we've been quite happy with it -
>> thanks!
>>
>> However, we have found that it crashes if the application is  
>> started in a
>> folder whose name contains a colon.  Of course, the Finder does not  
>> allow
>> the user to use a colon in file names, but other applications do.   
>> According
>> to the user:
>
>In Carbon APIs, these colons are represented by '/' (the POSIX path  
>delimiter)... from Finder (and I think also at the lowest level HFS+  
>APIs), that path looks like "6/10/06". Anything using the POSIX APIs  
>is going to see "6:10:06" though.
>
>> Is this a known problem?  Is there a work-around?
>
>It's a problem with Python actually, which persists even in the  
>trunk. Probably because a colon is often treated as a delimiter for a  
>list of paths (such as the PATH or PYTHONPATH environment variables).  
>If you run Python from a path containing ':' and look at sys.path,  
>you'll see that the paths that would've contained a colon are  
>mangled. I'm not sure where this happens and I don't have time to  
>track it down at the moment.
>
>It won't be possible to work around this without patching the Python  
>interpreter. For now you'll just have to tell your users Don't Do  
>That. I can only think of two workarounds:
>(1) just tell the user that they can't run the app from a path  
>containing a ":" in a relatively friendly manner (could be done in  
>the py2app bootstrap).
>(2) make a symlink somewhere from the py2app bootstrap if a ":" is in  
>the working directory and re-exec.
>
>I'm unlikely to do either of those things any time soon, but patches  
>are accepted. If you come up with a patch for Python, file it on  
>sourceforge and shoot a message referencing it here and someone will  
>definitely apply it. I'd hurry up though, because Python 2.5 is  
>pretty far along.
>
>-bob
>
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