[Python-3000] Move argv[0]? (Re: Unicode and OS strings) (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Mon Sep 17 05:58:18 CEST 2007

Larry Hastings wrote:

If nothing else, at least we could fix the proviso for argv[0]: "(it is operating system dependent whether this is a full pathname or not)."

It's actually worse than that -- you're entirely at the mercy of whatever made the exec() call as to whether it's a meaningful path at all.

Most programs are courteous enough to make sure it's at least a relative path to the executable being run, but you can't rely on that.

I'm not sure munging argv[0] to an absolute path is the right thing to do, if it's to be regarded as a low-level thing. A program wanting low-level access to argv might want to know exactly what was passed to exec() for some reason.

A separate sys.absolute_path_to_executable() or something might be better.

-- Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | Carpe post meridiem! | Christchurch, New Zealand | (I'm not a morning person.) | greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+

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