[Python-Dev] a simpler way to invoke pydoc, pdb, unittest, etc (original) (raw)

Dmitry Vasiliev lists at hlabs.spb.ru
Mon Sep 27 16:12:32 CEST 2004


Ilya Sandler wrote:

A problem:

a number of standard python modules come with a command line interfaces, e.g. pydoc.py, pdb.py , unittest.py, timeit.py, uu.py But it appears that there is no convenient out-of-the-box way to invoke these tools from command line... Basically one either has to write wrappers or to invoke them like this: python /usr/lib/python2.3/pdb.py Neither approach is convenient... Am I missing something obvious? If not, then would the following make sense? When a script specified from command line is not found and the script name does not end with py, treat the script as a module name and execute that module as main So python pdb would be equivalent to python /usr/lib/python2.3/pdb.py A possible variation of the same idea would be to have an explicit command line option -m (or -M). More typing, but less magic...

There is already has been some discussion about importing from command line: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-December/041240.html

I suggested the following:

  1. python -p package

    Equivalent to:

    import package

  2. python -p package.zip

    Equivalent to:

    import sys sys.path.insert(0, "package.zip") import package

-- Dmitry Vasiliev (dima at hlabs.spb.ru) http://hlabs.spb.ru



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