Environment vars

[Bob van der Poel]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 11:00 AM dn via Python-list <python-list at python.org>
wrote:

> On 26/11/2020 05:46, Bob van der Poel wrote:
> > I've got a program which accepts an optional env variable listing a
> single
> > or multiple directory for the app to use. I've done a bit of a search and
> > see both a comma and semicolon being used/suggested as a path separator.
> > Any consensus on which is better?
> >
> >     MYPATHS=foo,bar,woof
> > or
> >      MYPATHS=foo;bar;woof
> > And, certainly not
> >      MYPATHS=foo,bar;woof
> >
> > I did think I could be clever and check to see if the string contained a
> ,
> > or ; and spit it accordingly, but then what if the reason (hopefully,
> > pretty damned unlikely!) that a , or ; is being used as part of a path
> name?
>
>
> Is this a Python question? ie the above code should be run inside the
> Python interpreter (it won't).
>
> MS-Windows has an option to use a comma or a semi-colon as a
> list-separator on the 'command line' - as a local/locale definition, but
> there are caveats.
>
> Alternately, did you mean that the above is part of a data-file?
> -
>

Just to clarify, the variable can be set on the command line or in a shell
script. Most likely:

      MYPATH=aa,bb,cc  myprogram

and myprogram will look for the variable and slice it into chunks at ","s
or ";".

You're right, this is not really a python question. Probably a shell thing.

Thanks.

-- 

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