Discussion regarding the book 'A Byte of Python'

[cpghost AT cordula.ws]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 04:50:35PM -0800, Swaroop C H wrote:
> > With python, things are (fortunately) not that bad (yet!).
> > Teaching people to use #!/usr/bin/env python instead
> > of #!/usr/bin/python from the very beginning would be a
> > great thing to do.
> 
> I agree this is the right method.
> 
> However, this didn't work in one particular instance for me - when I 
> cron-ned
> the script on a FreeBSD box. It gave me an error but when I switched back to
> the physical location directly, it worked.

This normally happens when the environment (PATH) has been sanitized
for some reason. cron may have used a restrictive environment with
a PATH that didn't include, say, /usr/local/bin. In this case, env
wouldn't be able to find /usr/local/bin/python. 

That's why /usr/bin/env shouldn't be used in cgi scripts (most web
servers don't include /usr/local/bin in the PATH they pass to the
forked cgi process), but probably almost everywhere else it should.

> Still, '/usr/bin/env' would be the right thing to do. I'll make changes for 
> the
> next edition of the book.

Great! :)

Cheers,
-cpghost.

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