site.here on python 2.4

[ariza]

greetings. it seems that the attribute site.here, of the site module,
has vanished in python 2.4. up until python 2.3, site.here seemed (to
me at least) a convenient way to get the complete path to the python
library on any platform:
'/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3'

i do not see any information about this change save that in the new
documentation it says:

"""
This module is automatically imported during initialization. The
automatic import can be suppressed using the interpreter's -S option.

Importing this module will append site-specific paths to the module
search path.
"""

can anyone propose a similarly effective and cross-platform solution
for easily discovering the the library path on any python installation?

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

greetings. it seems that the attribute site.here, of the site module,
has vanished in python 2.4. up until python 2.3, site.here seemed (to
me at least) a convenient way to get the complete path to the python
library on any platform.

"here" was a temporary variable used to get the exact location of
the LICENSE file. in Python 2.4, that code has been moved into
a function, in which "here" is still a temporary variable.

was it documented somewhere else?

can anyone propose a similarly effective and cross-platform solution
for easily discovering the the library path on any python installation?

the library path is defined by the sys.path variable, which contains a list
of library directories.

sys.prefix gives you the installation root, sys.executable tells you where
the interpreter is.

if you need the exact behaviour of "site.here", you can do

import os
here = os.path.dirname(os.__file__)

but I don't really see why your program should have to care about
anything but the path...

</F>

 

[ariza]

i am not sure where i found site.here documented as used prior to 2.4.

the issue is that i do not need sys.path, as in the list of all paths
that python searches. sys.prefix is close to what i need:
'/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3'

but the old site.here gave sys.prefix, plus the additional directories
to get into the actual python library:
'/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3'

can we assume that, on all platforms, the old site.here is the same as:

os.path.join(sys.prefix, 'lib', 'python%s' % sys.version[:3])

'/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3'

or is it better to use, as you suggest,
'/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3'

this is useful for a few reasons. the first was i needed a cross
platform way to find the complete path to the idle directory; the
second was the complete path to the 'site-packages' directory.

thanks!