Finding startup files

[jeff elkins]

I'm creating an app that relies on a configuration file at launch. The file
will always exist in the app's installation directory, but I have no control
over where that might be.

Is there an OS-independent way that I can instruct the app to look in it's
home directory for startup files? Right now, I'm hard coding the path, which
won't work.

Thanks,

Jeff

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-05-11, jeff elkins <je********@ear thlink.net> wrote:

I'm totally new to Python (obvious,yes?) so how might argv[0] fail?

argv[0] contains whatever is put there by the program that
exec'ed you, and can therefore contain just about anything (or
nothing). It may not contain a full path, and your program's
install directory may not be in your $PATH (it be executed by a
shortcut or symlink).

If you're controlling how the program is installed and started,
then you're probably safe.

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at DREAM... or an episode of
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[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Thu, 12 May 2005 00:24:55 -0500, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> declaimed
the following in comp.lang.pytho n:

Yes, but Windows these days supports multiple users. Are you sure that
you want to restrict your users to one configuration file per
installed version of the program?
Even worse -- I've got a few applications that won't even run
from a "user account" because XP "protects" the normal "program files"
install directory, and the application tries to open/update the
configuration files.

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[Bernhard Herzog]

Grant Edwards <gr****@visi.co m> writes:

On 2005-05-11, jeff elkins <je********@ear thlink.net> wrote:

I'm totally new to Python (obvious,yes?) so how might argv[0] fail?

argv[0] contains whatever is put there by the program that
exec'ed you, and can therefore contain just about anything (or
nothing). It may not contain a full path, and your program's
install directory may not be in your $PATH (it be executed by a
shortcut or symlink).

That's true for the C-level, i.e. main's argv. If you're only concerned
about CPython and the program is a script living in a file, then
sys.argv[0] is the filename the python interpreter itself used to read
the script. Hence it's a valid filename that refers to the script. It
may be a relative filename, of course, in which case it won't be correct
anymore if the program changes its working directory.

Bernhard

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