[issue10060] python.exe crashes or hangs on help() modules when bad modules found

[Dev Player]

Dev Player <devplayer at gmail.com> added the comment:

I believe that a 3rd party package is corrupt. Whether it is or not I don't know. However whether or not a package is corrupt or not is not what I am reporting as a bug.

I am reporting that python.exe crashes when I do help() modules.


In GUI wrappers around python.exe, such as idle and pycrust, I get more information to the problem then when just in python.exe command line interpreter. As per the first post the errors I get in pycrust and idle are:
...
  File "Q:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\pythonwin\pywin\framework\app.py", line 367, in Win32RawInput
    ret=dialog.GetSimpleInput(prompt)
  File "Q:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\pythonwin\pywin\mfc\dialog.py", line 223, in GetSimpleInput
    if title is None: title=win32ui.GetMainFrame().GetWindowText()
error: The frame does not exist

To be honest the meaning of these errors is beyond my expertise, or lack of thereof. I attempted to give as much info on what I experienced with running python.exe help() modules as I saw.

If there is a direction you can point me to that I can gather more information then what I've already given, I'll give that a go as well.

Other pointers to reported problems of a similar nature:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/2008-November/020712.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python2.5/+bug/137210

Again this is not a report of a corrupt package. 

It is a report of python.exe crashing using commands considered part of Python.exe; that being help() then modules.

An external library may be the cause or may not. But if it is an external library that is corrupt I would hope python.exe would not fail because of it, but instead just either ignore the package or report an error. Another reason why I think python.exe shouldn't crash because of external library integrity is what if there is a file or some such thing in one's Python path that looks like and smells like a Python module/package but isn't? Should python.exe fail because of such a file?

I do not know the structure of a Python package or whether pythonwin on my PC is corrupt. However I imaging that if a fake package can be made so that IT is corrupt (perhaps make a missing file) that testing would be relatively easy.

Sorry I don't have more information for you. But hearing from others who have tried their python.exe help() modules works or fails would be a start.

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue10060>
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