[Python-Dev] Python install layout and the PATH on win32 (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Mar 20 17:24:31 CET 2012

On 3/20/2012 12:02 PM, VanL wrote:

On 3/20/2012 10:52 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:

In hearing from a couple people who teach python to beginners, this is a substantial hurdle - the first thing they need to do is to edit their environment to add these directories to the PATH. This is something I never understood. On Windows, it's custom to launch programs from the start menu, and Python is easy enough to find on the start menu (e.g. by typing "Python"). Why do people want to launch it by opening a shell window, then typing python?

Perhaps as the number of *nix users increases, the number of (*nix & windows) developer/users increases.

3. Get a shell and run python. This requires cd'ing to the directory where my .py file is, but then I run/import it and I see the information.

When IDLE crashes, running it from a cmd window is the only way to get a traceback to help diagnose the problem.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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