[Tutor] Cmd Advice

[Dave Hanson]

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Walter Prins <wprins at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Below is an *earlier* (note the date) private response by myself that
> at the time accidentally didn't get sent to the list and only to Dave
> (as he privately replied to me only and not to the list.) Given that
> the thread on the list has resumed,  I thought I'd forward this to the
> thread for completeness sake as otherwise a bit of context might be
> lost.
>
> Regards,
>
> Walter
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Walter Prins <wprins at gmail.com>
> Date: 8 February 2012 01:29
> Subject: Re: [Tutor] Cmd Advice
> To: Dave Hanson <dave at hansonforensics.co.uk>
>
>
> HI Dave,
>
>
> On 7 February 2012 16:55, Dave Hanson <dave at hansonforensics.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > I tried what you said, many attempts result in this message:
> >
> >>
> >> C:\Documents and Settings\dhanson2\Desktop>"C:\Python27\python.exe"
> "C:\t.py"
> >>
> >> C:\Python27\python.exe: can't open file 'C:\t.py': [Errno 2] No such
> file or directory
> >
> >
> > I've tried moving t.py around but still no joy?
> >
> > Here is what I put in my bat file with and without the quotes:
> >
> >>
> >> "C:\Python27\python.exe" "C:\t.py" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
> >
> >
>
> The error message implies that the program "t.py" is in the root of
> your C:\ drive?  I'd have thought this would not be the case -- you
> need to give the correct path to the "t.py" file for Python to load
> it. (And as an aside, you need to quote paths if theycontains spaces,
> otherwise the command prompt will interpret the first part up to a
> space in the path as the path/command and the remainder of the path as
> a command line argument!  (One subtlety of command lines...)  The
> "Documents and Settings" folder on Windows XP was therefore very
> unfortunately chosen since the spaces causes endless problems with
> people not realising this and trying to use files located inside
> Documents and Settings.  You'll notice on Windows 7 Microsoft has
> wisely (at last) decided to shorten and remove spaces as much as
> possible from paths to avoid gotchas with people forgetting to quote
> paths, and similarly Python itself does not uses spaces in any of its
> folder names.  But I digress.
>
> Anyway, I've had a quick further look at this program and got it
> working the way you want on my machine.  The precise steps I followed
> was:
> 1.) Install Mercurial for Windows (to be able to checkout the source).
>  I got it here: http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.org/download/index.html
> 2.) Retrieved the source code.  On my machine I opened a command prompt,
> and:
> cd "C:\Users\walterp\Documents\Python"
> hg clone https://bitbucket.org/sjl/t
>
> This creates a folder called "t" inside of my Python source folder.
> Adjust folders as required for your machine and/or where you keep your
> Python source.
>
> 3) Create a batch file called "t.bat" in
> "C:\Users\walterp\Documents\Python\t", so the full filename is
> "C:\Users\walterp\Documents\Python\t\t.bat", containing these lines:
>
> @echo off
> c:
> cd C:\Users\walterp\Documents\Python\t
> c:\python27\python.exe "C:\Users\walterp\Documents\Python\t\t.py" %1
> %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
>
> The effect of these commands is to stop the command interpreter from
> displaying the commands issues by the batch file (which is unwanted
> here) via the "@echo off" line, and then setting up the environment
> prior to running the t.py program such that it will always run having
> the "current working folder" be the same folder that the t.py program
> is located in.
>
> This is important since the t.py program currently assumes that it
> will always be run from the same starting location, which is not the
> case if you go and put the program on the command line search path so
> that you can use it from any other working folder.  (Without this, if
> you run the program from another location, then the t.py program will
> create a new task list in the new location -- basically the t.py
> command will create and manage a task list in whatever folder you
> happen to be in, so in order to ensure it always updates the same task
> list, the lines above therefore ensures it always effectively runs
> from the same place, regardless of where the batch file t.bat might
> have been run from, thereby effectively ensuring it to always uses the
> same task list file.)
>
> Also, note that in order to in fact use the t.bat file from any other
> folder, you'll have to add the bat files location to you system (or
> user) PATH variable.  Do you know how to do this, and are you allowed
> to do so, or are you blocked by your IT policies?  If so you should
> also be able to do this via e.g. another batch file, perhaps the same
> one you use to circumvent the cmd.exe blocks on your system, by simply
> adding it to the PATH variable there, e.g. a line like this ought to
> do it:
> PATH=%PATH%;C:\Users\walterp\Documents\Python\t
>
> Lastly a minor observation:  I note this source code includes a
> setup.py script.  This implies you can install t.py into your Python
> environment such that an .exe file will be created for it (really copy
> of the t.py file and the python interpreter [I think, or a launcher of
> some sort] combined) in the Python\Scripts folder.  Some Python
> distributions (e.g. Activestate IIRC) puts this folder onto the system
> Path thereby making "system wide" installed Python packages/commands
> (where appropriate) instantly usable from the command prompt, others
> (e.g. standard Python on Windows) do not and leaves this step for you
> to complete.  Anyway, I've obviously not gone the route of installin
> via setup.py, since installing this program in this way will make it
> difficult/impossible for you to tinker/edit the program easily, and
> I'm assuming you want to actually be able to edit the program (and
> possibly submit patches back to the author?) while using it etc.  So,
> for this to be possible you actually need the t.py to "run from
> source" and don't want to embedded in your Python environment, which
> is what not using setup.py and doing the above effectively enables you
> to do easily. (Aside: when I noticed the program isn't
> location/working directory independent I immediately thought this
> might be a useful patch/enhancement to make -- make it get the folder
> location of itself and use that for the location of the tasks list
> etc.)
>
> Let me know if you have further problems.
>
> Walter
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>  Hi Guys,
>

Apologies again for my slow response. I tried Dave's method to create a
'fake shell' and also Walters methods - All result in:

The command prompt has been disabled by your administrator.

I think I'll just have to do some restructuring to the program and just use
raw_input() with some kind of loop to keep the window open.
I'll post what I come up with (If I'm able to come up with something)
somewhere incase it's helps someone out.


[For future reference - should I have snipped the previous message out of
this email or trimmed it down a bit? Just thinking about my top posting
telling off from DaveA during the weekend!] (only kidding Dave) :)

Best Regards,

Dave Hanson
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