PYTHONPATH?
Magnus Lycka
lycka at carmen.se
Fri Feb 24 05:31:46 EST 2006
Dr. Pastor wrote:
> Several Documents about Python refer to PYTHONPATH.
If you need to import libraries into Python, that don't reside in the
standard locations in your Python installation, you need to define
a PYTHONPATH environment variable in the operating system, which
points out this directory.
Defining this is done in the same way as defining PATH etc.
> I could not find such variable.
Do you need it for anything?
> (Python 2.4.2, IDLE 1.1.2, Windows XP)
> How should/could I nominate a Directory to be the local Directory?
import os
os.chdir('c:/somedir')
Another way is to start python from there, e.g. from the
command prompt (nothing beats a command prompt!) you would do:
cd some\local\directory
python myscript.py (... or just python ...)
Note that backslash in a Python string literal denotes an escape
sequence. In Python 'c:\temp' means 'c' ':' tab 'e' 'm' 'p', since
'\t' is the escape sequence for a tab. You can use 'c:/temp' (ok
for Windows APIs) r'c:\temp' (r for raw string, i.e. don't use
escape sequences) or 'c:\\temp' (\\ is the escape sequence for
backslash).
Also note, that the way to use libraries from an arbitrary
directory without setting PYTHONPATH, is not with os.chdir,
but by doing this:
import sys
sys.path.append('c:/somedir')
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