PEP 271 – Prefixing sys.path by command line option

PEP

271

Title

Prefixing sys.path by command line option

Version

$Revision$

Last-Modified

$Date$

Author

fred at arakne.com (Frédéric B. Giacometti)

Status

Rejected

Type

Standards Track

Content-Type

text/x-rst

Created

15-Aug-2001

Python-Version

2.2

Post-History

Abstract

At present, setting the PYTHONPATH environment variable is the only method for defining additional Python module search directories.

This PEP introduces the ‘-P’ valued option to the python command as an alternative to PYTHONPATH.

Rationale

On Unix:

python -P $SOMEVALUE

will be equivalent to:

env PYTHONPATH=$SOMEVALUE python

On Windows 2K:

python -P %SOMEVALUE%

will (almost) be equivalent to:

set __PYTHONPATH=%PYTHONPATH% && set PYTHONPATH=%SOMEVALUE%\
   && python && set PYTHONPATH=%__PYTHONPATH%

Other Information

This option is equivalent to the ‘java -classpath’ option.

When to use this option

This option is intended to ease and make more robust the use of Python in test or build scripts, for instance.

Reference Implementation

A patch implementing this is available from SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php?group_id=5470&atid=305470&file_id=6916&aid=429614

with the patch discussion at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=305470&aid=429614&group_id=5470