>Why do you think str() is needed here? > > Because I'm not sure if sys.path was overwritten or changed. Some bad modules could overwrite sys.path with another list. I know I'm paranoid. :-)
>Possibly because sys.path can start with '' which is interpreted as the >current directory. Perhaps when the code is started as a windows service >[I know nothing about windows services], the current directory is set to >%windir%\system32 (where lots of DLLs hang out), and if there is a >zlib.dll there, it will get picked up first. Try printing the current >directory (see above). > > Okay, I did so. I wrote a service that prints out sys.path into a logfile. Here is the result: sys.path=['C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages\\win32', 'T:\\Python\\Lib', 'C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\python24.zip', 'C:\\WINDOWS\\system32', 'C:\\Python24\\DLLs', 'C:\\Python24\\lib', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\plat-win', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\lib-tk', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages\\win32', 'C:\\Python24', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages\\PIL', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages\\win32\\lib', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages\\Pythonwin', 'C:\\Python24\\lib\\site-packages\\wx-2.6-msw-ansi', 'T:\\Python\\Projects\\NamedConnector'] The empty string is not on sys.path. This is very strange, because it is different when I start the python interactively. The problem was caused by "C:\WINDOWS\system32", not the empty string. I'm still not sure why it is included in sys.path, and why '' is not there? I also checked the Python documentation about sys.path, and read the thread mentioned before but still sys.path is magical, and magic is not Pythonic. :-) Anyway, I think I have found the most platform independent solution. Here it is: >>> import _socket >>> import os >>> import sys >>> dyndir = os.path.split(_socket.__file__)[0] # This can be "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/lib-dynload" or "C:\Python24\DLLs" or whatever >>> sys.path.append(dyndir) In most cases, '_socket.pyd' will be the first module that can be imported, and it will by in the dynaload directory for sure. I feel this is still unclean code. Do you think that it would be nice to add new features to the sys module? sys.dlpath - could be the path to the lib-dynload or DLLs folder sys.libpath - could be the path to the lib folder >Setting the PYTHONVERBOSE environment variable may assist in showing >where modules are being loaded from. > > This cannot be used in conjunction with a windows service, because its output cannot be seen. :-( -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
