Why does my python not add current working directory to the path?
Question:
I keep seeing sites mentioning that the directory that you execute ‘python ‘ get added to the python path. For example on http://www.stereoplex.com/blog/understanding-imports-and-pythonpath, the author cd’s to the /tmp folder then does ‘print(sys.path)’ and lo and behold, the /tmp folder appears in the path list. Here is me trying this out on my system (with 2.6.6 installed):
example structure:
app/
mymodule.py
inner_folder/
myscript.py
in myscript.py contains the line:
import mymodule.py
what I did:
cd app
python inner_folder/myscript.py # ImportError
Since I am executing the interpreter from the app/ directory, shouldn’t ‘app’ be added to the python path? This is how a lot of the docs I have been reading have specified the behaviour should be.
Please enlighten!
(I have temporarily solved this by manually adding the folder I want into the environment but don’t want to rely on that forever. Since many sites say this can be done, I’d like to reproduce it for myself)
Answers:
Whether or not the current directory is in sys.path, import statements usually look like:
import mymodule
The code you wrote looks like:
import 'mymodule.py'
It is the script’s directory that is added, not the current directory. If you turn inner_folder/ into a package then you can use python -m inner_folder.myscript in order to run the script while having app/ added to sys.path.
Check that the module directory is not empty. That may sound stupid, but in my case I hadn’t realised that it was a git submodule and hadn’t cloned recursively.
I keep seeing sites mentioning that the directory that you execute ‘python ‘ get added to the python path. For example on http://www.stereoplex.com/blog/understanding-imports-and-pythonpath, the author cd’s to the /tmp folder then does ‘print(sys.path)’ and lo and behold, the /tmp folder appears in the path list. Here is me trying this out on my system (with 2.6.6 installed):
example structure:
app/
mymodule.py
inner_folder/
myscript.py
in myscript.py contains the line:
import mymodule.py
what I did:
cd app
python inner_folder/myscript.py # ImportError
Since I am executing the interpreter from the app/ directory, shouldn’t ‘app’ be added to the python path? This is how a lot of the docs I have been reading have specified the behaviour should be.
Please enlighten!
(I have temporarily solved this by manually adding the folder I want into the environment but don’t want to rely on that forever. Since many sites say this can be done, I’d like to reproduce it for myself)
Whether or not the current directory is in sys.path, import statements usually look like:
import mymodule
The code you wrote looks like:
import 'mymodule.py'
It is the script’s directory that is added, not the current directory. If you turn inner_folder/ into a package then you can use python -m inner_folder.myscript in order to run the script while having app/ added to sys.path.
Check that the module directory is not empty. That may sound stupid, but in my case I hadn’t realised that it was a git submodule and hadn’t cloned recursively.