Safest manner to extend search path for modules?

[Mike Meyer]

"Joseph Turian" <turian at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> What is the safest manner to extend search path for modules, minimizing
> the likelihood of shooting oneself in the foot?
>
> The system (which includes scripts and their shared modules) may be
> checked out in several different locations, but a script in a
> particular checked-out version of the system should only use modules
> from that checkout location.
>
> e.g. if the system contains a directory scripts/foo/ where all the
> scripts are housed, and scripts/modules/ where all the modules are
> housed, then is it correct for each script in scripts/foo/ to begin
> with:
>    import sys, os.path
>    sys.path.append(os.path.join(sys.path[0], "../modules"))
>
> If so, is there a cleaner way of doing this than including the above
> text in all scripts?

Put that text in a module that is already on the path, and then import
that module.

Or mabye generalize it into a function:

import sys, os.path

def fixpath(*new):
    sys.path.extend(os.path.join(sys.path[0], x) for x in new)

This requires 2.4. Change it to ([os.path ... new]) for earlier versions.

Of course, I note that sys.path[0] is '', so the join doesn't do anything.

   <mike


-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.