[Python-Dev] Utility scripts (Was: '-m' option) (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Mon Oct 4 20:49:43 CEST 2004

[Paul Moore]

... Accepting that Unix is generally not an issue, let's look at Windows. On cmd.exe, at least on Windows 2000 and up, the following makes .py files "executable" by python:

assoc .py=Python.File ftype Python.File=C:\Python23\python.exe "%1" %* set PATHEXT=%PATHEXT%;.py Can anyone test this on COMMAND.COM on Win9x?

PATHEXT has no special meaning on 9x; you can set PATHEXT on 9x, but it has no effect. ...

- Change the Windows Python binary to add .py (and .pyw, maybe) to PATHEXT

I don't like that. The Python Windows installer doesn't add, or modify, any environment variables now. It's anti-social to muck with them. Anyone using "a DOS box" should know how to do that themself -- if that's what they want. I'll note that I spend much of my life in a WinXP DOS box running Python programs, but I haven't set PATHEXT. Since cmd.exe's path completion fills in the trailing .py on a .py file all by itself, setting PATHEXT wouldn't save me any typing.

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