I am trying to opne a file that is located on a server using the windows cmd. What I do is basically the following thing:
import os
os.system('pushd '+ \\Server\PathToFile)
os.system('start Notepad '+ NameOfFile)
The point is that this works if I enter it by hand in the cmd. If I try to do it within python it does not work. I get this error message:
CMD.EXE was started with the path given above as current directory.
UNC-paths are not supported, therefore the windows-directory is used as
current directory.
The actual error message is in german, that's why I translated it and I'm not sure whether it's understandable or not. What actually happens is that the path where notepad is looking for the current file is C:\Windows instead of the path that I indicated.
Windows doesn't support setting the current directory to an UNC path, and it wouldn't have worked anyway since those are 2 separate os.system commands.
You could mount a drive on this path and use os.chdir, but that would make it more complex yet!
You don't really need current directory change. Moreover os.system is deprecated, it's recommended to use subprocess instead.
So change your code to run the command providing full path to the file:
import subprocess
subprocess.call(["start","notepad",os.path.join("\\Server\PathToFile",NameOfFile)],shell=True)
but I suspect you'd be better off with
os.startfile(os.path.join("\\Server\PathToFile",NameOfFile))
(default associations of Windows will probably open "notepad" in background, that's one-line & simple, & users can even change the editor used by just changing text file association in windows)
Related
I am trying to run python on Ubuntu. ADDED: It's a double boot system with Windows.
If I type python on the shell, it opens python. But I want to run a python file.
I have my python (.py) file saved on windows Desktop.
On Windows when I run a .py file in my command prompt, I just have to change directory to Desktop then type python myfile.py and the code runs successfully.
When I try to do that same thing in Ubuntu, it does not work. I made a Desktop directory in Ubuntu using the mkdir function.
Now, when I type python myfile.py, I get the error:
python: can't open file 'myfile.py': [Errno 2] No such file or
directory
I tried typing python on the Ubuntu shell then dragging the myfile.py file (~$ python C:\Users\username\Desktop\myfile.py), it used to run and then close the answer right away, but now I would get the error
python: can't open file 'C:UsersusernameDesktopmyfile.py': [Errno 2]
No such file or directory
Can anyone tell me what are the exact steps I need to do to fix this?
EDIT:
Here is what I am writing from the answers below:
~$ python /home/username/Desktop/myfile.py
Yet, I am getting this error:
python: can't open file '/home/username/Desktop/myfile.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory
EDIT 2**
So here is something new:
if I write
python /home/username/Desktop myfile.py
I get this error
/usr/bin/python: can't find 'main' module in '/home/username/Desktop
If I write
python /home/username/myfile.py
I do not get an error, but I do not get any output either. Ubuntu just goes to the next line $
Strange on Ubuntu your path starts with c:\...
On Ubuntu user folders are usually in /home, user folder can be referenced by ~, so IMHO python ~/Desktop/myfile.py should work in your environment.
EDIT: noted you made Desktop folder, not original Desktop, that way when you are in that folder type pwd it will show full path, then put it in python PATH/myfile.py (and just in case you may type ls to show list of files in current folder on Linux to check you are indeed in the right folder where your program is).
ADDED: after discussion it turned to be double boot system, mount showed mounted windows disk and file.py was found and run!
Backslash '\' is an escape character, in Unix it will not be used if you put it in a path. It results in your error of path not found.
Use slash '/', your code should run.
It is weird that you have a path for windows, in Unix you should not have this type of path...
Open a terminal, go to the folder with your python script. Use pwd in the terminal to know the exact location and then copy the path and use the following (I take an example here):
python PATHTOYOURPYTHONSCRIPT/mypythonscript.py
You're trying to use windows path representation in Linux. Windows and Linux has different path representations.
In windows, you can use C:\ but in Linux it's just a / which is used to denote the root directory.
In the terminal, type 'pwd' where your python file is present in Ubuntu and you'll see the output as '/home/username/Desktop' which is not like windows.
So you need to run like, 'python /home/username/Desktop/my file.py'.
If you need to access the file present in the windows partition, you need to mount the windows partition. This can be done using the Files app present in Ubuntu. After that, you can navigate to /mnt/media/ and find your file.
In Windows 8, I often use the Python Windows Launcher like
py C:/long/long/long/long/long/path/to/prog.py ...
Is there any way to set some environment setting, such as PATH or PYTHONPATH etc, to prevent having to type the full path to prog.py?
From my basic knowledge/research, PATH only helps with the py part of the command line and PYTHONPATH only helps with imports within prog.py, so how do I deal with the path to prog.py itself??
Notes:
I cannot modify the code, not even the "shebang" line, since it is needed to work on other platforms.
I cannot cd to the directory containing the programs to run them, because the programs will do something based on the directory they're run in (they'll modify the files in the directory they're run in).
I know that if I associate .py extension with the Python Windows Launcher, then I can run prog.py as the first item in the command line, and thus use PATH, but currently my .py extension is associated with my favorite editor and I'd like to keep it that way if possible (so I can double-click any Python file in Windows Explorer and edit it).
However, if someone suggests a solution where I can have a different association for Windows Explorer versus the command line, then that could be a potential solution! (i.e. in Windows Explorer, .py opens with the editor, while on command line, .py runs with Python Windows Launcher)
Add your long path to PYTHONPATH, then invoke your program as such:
python -m prog
Python will search for a module called prog and then run it as the main module.
Answer to my own question: Actually, I'm so silly. I could just set a variable for each program path (there are only a few programs paths), i.e.. prog=C:/long/path/to/prog.py and then do py %prog% .... I guess I figured out an answer to my own question that was acceptable to me.
Update: I just found something even better. I can do
doskey prog=py C:/long/path/to/prog.py $*
and then simply prog ... afterward
Now I just have to do some crazy stuff to get the doskey command into a file that will be run every time I start a console, as described here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21040825/5182136
I need to start excel and open a file directly from python. Currently I am using:
import os
os.system('start excel.exe file.xls')
However I do not get desired result. I want to open a file from local destination (file is in the same folder with program), but this code open's the file with same name in my home (user) directory and not from my program directory.
The problem is that the directory where the program is located is not used. The current working directory is. So you have to find out which directory your program is located in, which python conveniently prepared for you in:
sys.path[0]
and either change directory to it:
os.chdir(sys.path[0])
or give full path for the file you want to open
os.system('start excel.exe "%s\\file.xls"' % (sys.path[0], ))
Note, that while Windows generally accept forward slash as directory separator, the command shell (cmd.exe) does not, so backslash has to be used here. start is Windows-specific, so it's not big problem to hardcode it here. More importantly note that Windows don't allow " in file-names, so the quoting here is actually going to work (quoting is needed, because the path is quite likely to contain space on Windows), but it's bad idea to quote like this in general!
You can also define the directory, where the python should operate.
import os
os.chdir('C:\\my_folder\\subfolder')
os.system('start excel.exe my_workbook.xlsx')
Don't forget to use backslashes in your path and there must be two of them everytime.
my_workbook.xlxs - here will be the name of your file
That file must be in that folder :)
How does one acquire the directory of the Windows Shortcut calling a python script. I'd like to have multiple shortcuts in various places pointing to one script that I could edit if I wanted, but where the directory from which the script is called is accessible. Is this possible?
This script would likely then be compiled with py2exe or something, so if it is something that isn't possibly until THAT stage, I could go with that. Thanks!
The easiest solution is to just use a batch script instead of a shortcut.
All it needs is python C:\path\to\script\script.py, and the script will have the correct CWD.
The default when creating a shortcut on windows is for the Start in: property to be set to the folder the linked file resides in.
The script has no knowledge of the fact that it was called from a shortcut, let alone where that shortcut resides.
You can change the Start in: property of the shortcut to the path of the folder the shortcut resides in.
Then you can use os.getcwd() to get that path.
Unfortunately setting Start in: to . doesn't work.
In general you cannot obtain this information. You should use argv to switch behaviour of your script.
you can do so with
import os
print os.getcwd()
os.getcwd()
Return a string representing the current working directory.
Availability: Unix, Windows.
Does anyone know where or how to set the default path/directory on saving python scripts prior to running?
On a Mac it wants to save them in the top level ~/Documents directory. I would like to specify a real location. Any ideas?
On OS X, if you launch IDLE.app (by double-clicking or using open(1), for example), the default directory is hardwired to ~/Documents. If you want to change the default permanently, you'll need to edit the file idlemain.py within the IDLE.app application bundle; depending on which Python(s) you have installed, it will likely be in one of:
/Applications/MacPython 2.x/IDLE.app/Contents/Resources
/Applications/MacPython 2.x/IDLE.app/Contents/Resources
/Applications/MacPorts/Python 2.x/IDLE.app/Contents/Resources
/Applications/Python 2.x/IDLE.app/Contents/Resources
/Applications/Python 3.x/IDLE.app/Contents/Resources
Edit the line:
os.chdir(os.path.expanduser('~/Documents'))
On the other hand, if you start IDLE from the command line, for example, with:
$ cd /some/directory
$ /usr/local/bin/idle
IDLE will use that current directory as the default.
I actually just discovered the easiest answer, if you use the shortcut link labeled "IDLE (Python GUI)". This is in Windows Vista, so I don't know if it'll work in other OS's.
1) Right-click "Properties".
2) Select "Shortcut" tab.
3) In "Start In", write file path (e.g. "C:\Users...").
Let me know if this works!
In Windows 10+, click the Windows Start button, then type idle, and then right-click on the IDLE desktop app and open the file location. This should bring you to the Start Menu shortcuts for Python, and you'll find a shortcut to IDLE there. Right-click on the IDLE shortcut and select properties. Set the "Start in" directory to be where you want default save path to be.
It seems like you can get idle into the directory you want if you run any module from that directory.
I had previously tried opening idlemain.py through the path browser. I was able to open and edit the file, but it seemed like I wasn't able to save my modifications.
I'm just glad to hear other people are having this problem. I just thought I was being stupid.
If you open a module, that sets the default working directory.
Start IDLE.
File -> Open to open your file. And set the current working directory.
In my case, the default directory is set to the directory from which I launched IDLE. For instance, if I launched IDLE from a directory called 'tmp' in my home directory, the default save path is set to ~/tmp. So start your IDLE like this:
~/tmp $ idle
[...]
On Windows (Vista at least, which is what I'm looking at here), shortcut icons on the desktop have a "Start in" field where you can set the directory used as the current working directory when the program starts. Changing that works for me. Anything like that on the Mac? (Starting in the desired directory from the command line works, too.)
For OS X:
Open a new finder window,then head over to applications.
Locate your Python application. (For my mac,it's Python 3.5)
Double click on it.
Right click on the IDLE icon,show package contents.
Then go into the contents folder,then resources.
Now,this is the important part:
(Note: You must be the administrator or have the administrator's password for the below to work)
Right click on the idlemain.py,Get Info.
Scroll all the way down. Make sure under the Sharing & Permissions tab,your "name"(Me) is on it with the privilege as Read & Write.
If not click on the lock symbol and unlock it.
Then add/edit yourself to have the Read & Write privilege.
Lastly,as per Ned Deily's instructions,edit the line:
os.chdir(os.path.expanduser('~/Documents'))
with your desired path and then save the changes.
Upon restarting the Python IDLE,you should find that your default Save as path to be the path you've indicated.
I am using windows 7 and by going to Start-> IDLE(Python 3.6 32-bit)
The click on properties and then in the shortcut tab go to
Start in and entering the desired path worked for me kindly note if IDLE is open and running while you do this you'll have to shut it down and restart it for this to work
If you locate the idlelib directory in your Python install, it will have a few files with the .def extension. config-main.def has instructions on where to put the custom config files. However, looking through these I did not find any configurable paths (your install may vary). Looks like you might need to crack open the editor code to alter it.
If you are using linux, you can create simple .sh file as presented below::
#!/bin/sh
cd /fullPath/PythonScripts/
idle
make the file executable by right click-> properties-> permissions-> check the execute as program checkbox-> done
Run the file :)