[Tkinter-discuss] tkFileDialog.askopenfile() mac

[JBB]

On 8/12/14, 1:20 AM, Michael Lange wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 11 Aug 2014 20:37:38 -0700
> JBB <jeanbigboute at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am attempting to use tkFileDialog.askopenfile():
>>
>> 1) On my Mac OSX Mavericks w/ Python 2.7.8, Anaconda 2.0.1 (x86_64) the
>> following code (found via web searches) crashes:
>>
>> from Tkinter import *
>> import tkFileDialog
>> root = Tk()
>> root.withdraw()
>> file = tkFileDialog.askopenfile(parent=root)
>>
> (...)
>
> I don't know about the Mac-specific issues, but nevertheless two things
> hit my eye here :)
> First, I would not recommend using "file" as a variable name because this
> way you override one of Python's built-ins (though I don't think this has
> anything to do with the crash, except if you accidentally try to use the
> built-in later in your code).
> Second, are you sure that you want to use askopenfile () and not
> askopenfilename() ? The latter just returns the filename as a string
> (which is what's intended in most cases) whereas the first returns a
> readily opened file object. Quoting the code from tkFileDialog.py:
>
>      # FIXME: are the following  perhaps a bit too convenient?
>
>      def askopenfile(mode = "r", **options):
>          "Ask for a filename to open, and returned the opened file"
>
>          filename = Open(**options).show()
>          if filename:
>              return open(filename, mode)
>          return None
>
> Regards
>
> Michael

Thank you.  You are right, askopenfilename is what I want.  I wasn't 
aware that this method existed.

After some more digging, I find that Python uses the macosx backend on 
initialization.  If I change this to tk before beginning work, the 
problem goes away.  My Linux Python uses tk by default.

As a newcomer to Python, I had read that Tkinter was "the" Python GUI 
tool and started copying code from examples and discussion threads. 
But, it is clear that there are other tools for GUI programming and that 
backend selection may have to be matched depending on the package.

JBB