[Python-Dev] Segmentaion fault with wrongly set PYTHONPATH on Windows (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull turnbull at sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
Tue Oct 23 01:39:03 CEST 2012

anatoly techtonik writes:

I am not a C coder and don't have any core Unix programming background. If Python is unable to start because it can not find its libraries, I prefer an explanative error message with standard system error code. Even if it is Fatal Python error - this case is still in user land and should be fixed normally.

Python can't know that the problem is in "user land" as you call it. For all Python knows, the directory containing its libraries is corrupt, or that the file system code itself experienced a mysterious glitch.

While in the technical sense the problem here is in userland, not in the kernel, the distinction you're making is incoherent. For most users, it doesn't matter whether an environment variable is set incorrectly without their knowledge, or if the kernel is buggy, or if the disk is corrupt. And from Python's point of view, the world as a whole no longer makes.

So it shuts down abnormally. That's what an abort means, in programming as in rocket launches. Users should be scared if this happens; somebody really screwed up. (Unless it's themselves, and then they only have themselves to blame.)

The error message could be improved though. Right now I get:

E:>python Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: unable to load the file system codec ImportError: No module named 'encodings'

This could be improved to:

Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: unable to find module named 'encodings' in 'C:'

That may be an improvement. But in that case it might be worth explaining where "C:" came from (in this case PYTHONHOME, I guess?)

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