Issue 13728: Description of -m and -c cli options wrong? (original) (raw)

Hi, looking at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/docs/2011-December/006672.html I tried to replicate what the user said, and it seems that -c and -m doesn't add the current directory to the start of sys.path:

$ echo -e "import sys\nprint (sys.path)" > dummy.py ; ./python -mdummy ['', '/usr/local/lib/python27.zip', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/plat-linux2', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/lib-tk', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/lib-old', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7-pydebug', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

and

$ ./python -c "import dummy" ['', '/usr/local/lib/python27.zip', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/plat-linux2', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/lib-tk', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/lib-old', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7-pydebug', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

the same sys.path as from the interactive shell:

$ ./python Python 2.7.2+ (2.7:f0666e56a552, Jan 7 2012, 16:31:06) [GCC 4.6.1] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

import sys [38650 refs] sys.path ['', '/usr/local/lib/python27.zip', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/plat-linux2', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/lib-tk', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/Lib/lib-old', '/home/morph/cpython/py27/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7-pydebug', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages'] [38657 refs]

So, is http://docs.python.org/using/cmdline.html#interface-options correct in saying "he current directory will be added to the start of sys.path (allowing modules in that directory to be imported as top level modules)."? (and so forth for -m option?) am I confused?

see http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html#sys.path

"As initialized upon program startup, the first item of this list, path[0], is the directory containing the script that was used to invoke the Python interpreter. If the script directory is not available (e.g. if the interpreter is invoked interactively or if the script is read from standard input), path[0] is the empty string, which directs Python to search modules in the current directory first."

So the empty string here is the current working directory (at the time the script is run?).