You are absolutely right, it's that empty entry that allows the absolute path to work. I'll probably add the path to sys.path, but as this is only a config file from which I need just a few vars, I'll try to use execfile, looking in past threads it looks like a better option for this use, I really don't need the new path, it could introduce subtle bugs as it is not something expected.
Any equivalent way of doing the same with execfile? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list