can't pass command-line arguments

[Peter Hansen]

BartlebyScrivener wrote:
> No conflicting bat file.

What about a conflicting non-BAT file?  Anything in PATHEXT ahead of the 
.PY extension is a candidate...


> if __name__ == "__main__":
>     print sys.argv
>     for path in all_files(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2]):
>         print path
> 
> If I run
> 
> cbfindfiles.py d:/ *emacs*
> 
> from the command prompt I get:
> 
> ['d:\\python\\cbfindfiles.py', 'd:/', '*emacs*']
> followed by a list of matching files
> 
> If I run
> 
> cbfindfiles d:/ *emacs*
> 
> If get an empty command prompt back.

Then it's very likely not running this file...  what if you put a print 
at the very top of that file, saying just this:

     print "running",__file__

If you don't see that, I think you have pretty good confirmation that it 
is *not* in fact running that file.

> Oh, well.
> 
> Not worth troubling over.

But it is.  To help others.  Perhaps what you are encountering is a real 
bug, and solving it could avoid us having to deal with the same issue in 
the future (though it seems more likely it's something special to your 
case, but at least then we'll have a clear answer).  Please reconsider 
and investigate further.

If you run the following script and pass it the name "cbfindfiles", it 
will print out a list of all files in the PATH that might be executed 
when you type that name, in the order of the possible extensions in 
PATHEXT.  While you may be sure there's no .BAT file with that name, 
maybe there is another with some other extension.

import sys
import os

name = sys.argv[1]
for dir in ['.'] + os.environ['PATH'].split(';'):
     path = os.path.join(dir, name)
     for ext in os.environ.get('PATHEXT', '').split(';'):
         fullpath = path + ext
         if os.path.isfile(fullpath):
             print fullpath


-Peter