Why doesn't Python remember the initial directory?

[Roy Smith]

In article <k0tf8g$adc$1 at news.albasani.net>,
 Walter Hurry <walterhurry at lavabit.com> wrote:

> It is difficult to think of a sensible use for os.chdir, IMHO.

It is true that you can mostly avoid chdir() by building absolute 
pathnames, but it's often more convenient to just cd somewhere and use 
names relative to that.  Fabric (a very cool tool for writing remote 
sysadmin scripts), gives you a cd() command which is a context manager, 
making it extra convenient.

Also, core files get created in the current directory.  Sometimes 
daemons will cd to some fixed location to make sure that if they dump 
core, it goes in the right place.

On occasion, you run into (poorly designed, IMHO) utilities which insist 
of reading or writing a file in the current directory.  If you're 
invoking one of those, you may have no choice but to chdir() to the 
right place before running them.