[Python-Dev] proposed which.py replacement (original) (raw)

Stefan Rank list-ener at strank.info
Sun Apr 1 15:39:00 CEST 2007

on 31.03.2007 22:39 Guido van Rossum said the following:

If you ask me, having it hosted by Trent is probably more helpful for its popularity than putting it in the Python source distro; the Tools directory is mostly a poorly-maintained collection of trivia I wrote many years ago that is now quietly gathering dust.

Some time ago, I posted a feature request_ about which.py including the proposal to put it into the std-lib as which or os.which to allow programmatic use and::

python -m which ...

This should take care of the visibility problem. ;-) However, there are several todos_, including tests and docs, before this can even be considered.

I am afraid I did not have any time to work on it yet.

cheers, stefan

.. _feature request: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1509798&group_id=5470&atid=355470 .. _todos: http://trentm.com/projects/which/TODO.txt

(Not all of it, of course; there's some useful stuff there that I didn't write, which ended up there because it is either used by the distro (e.g. the compiler package support) or because the author needed a channel that guaranteed open source status (e.g. world and pynche). But Trent's which.py doesn't seem to fall in either category.)

--Guido On 3/31/07, Shane Geiger <sgeiger at ncee.net> wrote: Trent Mick has a module called which.py that might make a nice platform-independent replacement for python2.5/Tools/scripts/which.py.

http://www.trentm.com/projects/which/ Why which.py? |which.py| is a small GNU-which replacement. It has the following features: * it is portable (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Un*x); * it understands PATHEXT and "App Paths" registration on Windows (i.e. it will find everything that |start| does from the command shell); * it can print all matches on the PATH; * it can note "near misses" on the PATH (e.g. files that match but may not, say, have execute permissions); and * it can be used as a Python module. I also would be happy to have this be a replacement for the |which.py| in the Python CVS tree at |dist/src/Tools/scripts/which.py| which is Unix-specific and not usable as a module; and perhaps for inclusion in the stdlib.

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