I have written a program and compiled it which edits CSV files. I don't want to put there a working directory in the code I want the program to edit the CSV files when they are parallel to the program directory.
E.g.:
Path to program: C:\Programs\CSVEditor
Path of CSVs: C:\Programs
But the CSVEditor and the files could be anywhere on the workstation or on a server and I want it to work anywhere...can someone understand what I wanna say?
Does anybody has an idea what I need to do?
Thanks.
Put the CSVEditor script's directory onto your Path. That way, no matter where you are, you can type this at the command line:
csv_editor.py my_file.csv
Related
I am working on a python project that depends on some other files. It all works fine while testing. However, I want the program to run on start up. The working directory for programs that run on start up seems to be C:Windows\system32. When installing a program, it usually asks where to install it and no matter where you put it, if it runs on start up, it knows where its files are located. How do they achieve that? Also, how to achieve the same thing in python?
First of all, what do you mean by "their files"? Windows applications can store "their files" in multiple places (including but not limited to %CommonProgramFiles%, %ProgramData% and %AppData%).
That being said, the common location for simple applications and scripts is to use the same directory as the .exe (or script).
In Python there seems to be multiple ways to find this path, this seems to work nicely:
import os
print(os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)))
See also:
How do I get the path of the Python script I am running in?
How do I get the path and name of the file that is currently executing?
If you plan to consume local files that contain raw data or processed data, defining a default directory or a set of directories can simplify your implementation, for example:
Place your data files under a specific set of folders in C:\ or place your files under the F:\ folder, that can be a part of your on premisses file system
Based on where your Python application is located, you'll need to use relative paths or a library to help you to locate these files.
Here are some examples:
os.path
pathlib
Not a major issue but just an annoyance I've come upon while doing class work. I have my Notepad++ set up to run Python code straight from Notepad++ but I've noticed when trying to access files I have to use the full path to the file even given the source text file is in the same folder as the Python program being run.
However, when running my Python program through cmd I can just type in the specific file name sans the entire path.
Does anyone have a short answer as to why this might be or maybe how to reconfigure Notepad++?
Thanks in advance.
The problem is that your code is assuming that the current working directory is the same as the script directory. This is not true in general. Of course it is true if you're in a cmd window, and you cd to the script directory before running it.
If you don't want to rely on that (e.g., because you want to be able to run scripts from Notepad++, or directly from Explorer), what you want to do is use the script directory explicitly. For example:
import os
import sys
scriptdir = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0]))
with open(os.path.join(scriptdir, 'myfile.txt')) as f:
# etc.
If you have a ton of files that your scripts reference in a ton of places, it might be better to explicitly set the working directory. Just add one line:
os.chdir(scriptdir)
For anything beyond quick&dirty scripts, it's usually better to build an installable package and use pkg_resources to access the data files. Read the Tutorial on Packaging and Distributing Projects for more details. But as long as you're only hacking up scripts to help you maintain your specific system, the scriptdir solution is workable.
In the properties of the shortcut that you use to start Notepad++, you can change its working directory, to whichever directory you're more accustomed to starting from in Python. You can also begin your python program with the appropriate os.chdir() command.
I made a simple python script which creates a text file. The contents of the script are
f = open("New", "w")
f.close
Now I moved the script to the desktop (I'm on a mac) and ran it, and nothing shows up. No file is created on the desktop that is visible for me.
I actually made this little script because one of my other scripts involves opening/creating a text file and reading from it. I entered the information wrong while in my program forever, and now the entire thing is broken and I cant fix it because I have no idea where it's created the darn text file. I was under the impression that just opening a file with giving it an absolute path would create it in the same directory as the script. I seem to have been mistaken.
I've been launching the script from the terminal with the command
python3 /Users/me/Desktop/script.py
Because of that, I feel like its creating the file somewhere in the python3 install location or within wherever the python3 unix exec is located. I think. Can't check.
Are any of you guys willing to help out?
-pipsqueaker117
EDIT: Here's a link to the big program which broke.
It'll be created in the current working directory, which is the directory from which you called the script.
Your file will be created in the current directory (most probably in /Users/me/ if you just opened the terminal)
Try:
cd /Users/me/Desktop/
python3 /Users/me/Desktop/script.py
You should modify your program to change the working directory (before you write the file) to the place where you want files to show up.
import os
os.chdir('/Users/me/Desktop') # or whatever
This should be a directory where you have permission to write files.
You can always ask:
import os
cwd=os.getcwd()
print(cwd)
That will print the directory the file (without a path) will be opened in.
You can change to a specific directory (in Python) this way:
import os
try:
os.chdir('/Users/me/Desktop')
except OSError as e:
print e
Basically I am looking for a simple way to open text file in a folder that is inside the same folder as the program.
My directory structure looks like this:
/programfolder/textfiles/textfile
And I'm trying to use open like this:
text=functionthatgetsfilename()
file=open("textfiles/"+text,"r")
What am I doing wrong? Do I just have a typo somewhere?
You need to know the difference between the Current Directory and the directory your script is in. Your current directory is the directory that you started the application from, in the command line (CMD, SH, etc). You can show that with os.path.normpath(os.curdir).
To solve your problem, you can use
file=open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__),'holdstextfiles',text),'r')
or
os.chdir(os.path.dirname(__file__))
...
The first solution uses the absolute path to your desired file, which is the same no matter what: it's absolute
The second solution changes the current directory before trying to use the relative path that you're using.
Hi!I made a chess engine in python which i then compiled to .exe using py2exe. The problem is that it doesn't look very neat when i have all the strange files gathered together in the same folder (dist). I'd like to make a new folder inside the dist folder that contains all the helper files, so all my dist folder contains is the folder holding the helper files and the main launch application. However, i can't simply copy the helper files to a new folder, as the computer doesn't find them then and raises an error.
How can it be solved? Also, i'm using inno setup to make an installation, but i can't figure out how to find a solution there, either.
Thank you very much!
There is a feature in the configuration of py2exe that allows you to bundle all the Python files in a single library.zip file. That would considerably reduce the amount of files in the root directory, but there will still remain some files, regardless of all that.
These files are generally DLL files, at least from what I saw with GUI applications. You cannot remove these, because they are required to launch the application. A workaround to this problem is to create a batch file that will run the actual program which can be in child directory. The point is that these files should either be in the same directory as the executable, or the current working directory, or a path in the PATH environment variable. At least it's the case of most of these. Another approach might be a batch file which will modify the PATH variable or cd to another directory and run the file afterwards
I never tried to do it, so it might break some things for you. Anyway, IMO the best approach is to create an installer and add shortcuts and you won't have to bother with the user messing with these files.
Try using pyinstaller instead. It's easy to use, and will compile your PythonLib and all necessary python files to a stand alone EXE. So you don't have to worry about the having a mess of files in your dist file. (just one single exe).
And if you have other external files, such as databases, text files, csv's. etc... you can set them up to deploy in exactly the fashion you want from the inno setup [Files] section.
I wrote a detailed explanation on this yesterday, so check out this link:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/13259452/1339024
--Edit--
*Make sure you use pyinstaller 1.5 , as the 2.x version doesn't exactly work the same