[Python-Dev] Adding Python scripts to PATHEXT on Windows (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sun Jul 28 09:58:51 CEST 2013

On 28 July 2013 00:30, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:

> And if you change the association after the fact, you're presumably just as capable > of changing PATHEXT.

Not if the association is changed by another installer (presumably with the user's explicit permission). It would be very easy for people to go a long time without noticing this until some program does ShellExecute(...) on a name that happens to be a Python script and Visual Studio pops open...

Mph. I'd argue that as Python "owns" the .py extension, any other application that changes the default action of .py scripts without both making that behaviour optional and making it off by default, is at least unfriendly and arguably even broken. But that's just a matter of opinion...

As regards ShellExecute, I don't know how that is affected by PATHEXT. I looked quite hard and couldn't find complete "official" documentation on how PATHEXT is supposed to work, so I'm working a bit on experiment and best guesses here :-( I'll go and check what the ShellExecute documentation says on the matter (but I'm surprised - I got the impression that PATHEXT was purely a console mechanism, so I don't quite understand why ShellExecute would use it).

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