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

skip at pobox.com skip at pobox.com
Sun Apr 1 19:56:50 CEST 2007 

Stefan> I use it as a library, because it encodes knowledge about
Stefan> locating executables on different platforms, especially Windows.
Stefan> Unixoids have which and the search is relatively
Stefan> straightforward.  Windows searches paths in PATH and in the
Stefan> registry, and uses PATHEXT, so, for me, the main benefit of
Stefan> which.py is that it provides a which replacement on Windows that
Stefan> takes these quirks into account.

I'll second that. In SpamBayes we not so long ago added the ability to run OCR software over images to try and identify image-based spam. Needless to say, we had to write fairly different bits of code on Unix v. Windows to locate the gocr or ocrad executables. Having something like a platform-independent which available in Python would have made this aspect of the code easier to write.

Skip

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list