[Python-Dev] Suggestion to Windows- and Mac-library people

[Eric S. Raymond]

Last night I sent the following patch for urllib to python-patches:

# Support for launching a browser

if os.environ.has_key("BROWSER"):
    _browsers = string.split(os.environ["BROWSER"], ":")
else:
    _browsers = ["mozilla %s &",
                "netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'",
                "netscape %s &",
                "lynx %s &",
                "w3m %s &"]

def urlbrowse(url):
    """Launch a browser, in background, pointed at the given URL.
    Accept either a string or a parsed URL tuple. 
    Interpret the BROWSER environment variable, if it exists,
    as a colon-separated list of browser commands to try.
    """
    from urlparse import urlunparse 
    if type(url) == ():
        url = urlunparse(url)
    for browser in _browsers:
        if not os.system('which 1>/dev/null 2>&1 '+string.split(browser)[0]):
            if os.system((browser % url)) == 0:
                return 1
    return 0

Obviously this is not portable off Unix.  Equally obviously it should
be possible to do an equivalent thing under Windows (at least).  For
anybody writing interactive programs in this Web-mad era, this
function is just too useful not to have in the toolbox.  So this is a
nudge to any Windows and Mac wizards on this list -- let's make this
function available cross-platform.

I've also copied this note to Chip Salzenberg.  Perl ought to have
this capability too -- and I'm sufficiently serious about that to
(gasp) code in Perl myself to make it happen if I have to.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by
claiming it's not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging
others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they
don't like.
	-- Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School