strange python scripting error

Thu Jul 23 19:03:14 EDT 2009

Mark Tarver wrote:
> I have a very strange error.  I have two test python files test.py and
> python.py which contain the following code
>
> #!/usr/bin/python
> print "Content-type: text/html"
> print
> print "<html>"
> print "<center>Hello, Linux.com!</center>"
> print "</html>"
>
> One file (test.py) works; you call it up and it shows a web page with
>
> Hello, Linux.com
>
> The other fails with a server configuration error.  Both are running
> under Linux, same server, same permissions.  Running a character scan
> shows that both files contain the same printable characters and are
> therefore typographically identical.   They are absolutely the same.
>
> The only hint at a difference I can see is that my ftp program says
> the files are of unequal lengths.  test.py is 129 bytes long.
> python.py 134 bytes long.
>
> A zipped folder containing both files is at
>
> www.lambdassociates.org/weird.zip
>
> Any ideas welcome.
>
> Mark
>
>   
Easiest explanation is that python.py has Windows-style newlines.  In 
other words, each line ends with 0d0a, rather than the Unix convention 
of 0a.

If your server is Unix-based, it can't handle that first line, since it 
has an illegal character (0d) following the

#!/usr/bin/python

line.  Convert it to Unix line-endings.

DaveA