> Does anybody know why this would happen or what I could be doing wrong?
os.putenv will only affect the environment in subprocesses. Consider this session fragment: % python Python 2.7.2 (default, Oct 17 2012, 03:11:33) [GCC 4.4.6 [TWW]] on sunos5 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import os >>> os.putenv("PATH", "/tmp") >>> os.system("/usr/bin/env") ... PATH=/tmp ... Skip -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list