os.environ conflicts with my shell

[Michael Hudson]

Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> writes:

> lewst <lewst at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > I'm having problems with os.environ conflicting with my shell when
> > trying to set environment variables.  I'll illustrate with an example.
> > Take the following short Python program:
> > 
> >   #!/usr/bin/env python
> >   # start up an xterm with $NAME="John Q. Public"
> >   import os
> >   os.environ["NAME"] = "John Q. Public"
> >   os.system("xterm &")
> > 
> > The trouble is that the environment in the new xterm still contains
> > the old value of the $NAME environment variable.  I'm guessing this is
> > because $NAME is also set in my .zshrc which overwrites the value
> > Python assigned to $NAME.

Doh, didn't read this the first time!

> > How can I get the value of os.environ["NAME"] to stick in new xterm's
> > environment?

try os.system("xterm -e zsh -f &"); this disables the reading of most
of the init files.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier
to program in C is that you can't easily express complex  problems
in C, so you don't.                 -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp