Cannot get python on mac osx to reference my scripts folder

Question

Am pretty new to python although have programmed a lot before. I'm using mac osx snow leopard and python 2.6.1.

I've followed this post about setting your PYTHONPATH to a custom scripts directory but can't get python to recognise it. How can I run my python script from the terminal in Mac OS X without having to type the full path?

So i've got a simple helloworld script in /Users/richn/Documents/scripts/ called hello.py

Inside is this

#!/usr/bin/env python

print "Hello World!"

I've created a .profile file in my home directory with this in it

export PYTHONPATH=/Users/richn/Documents/scripts

I've also changed permissions of the file to make it executable with chmod a+x hello.py

Running ./hello.py in the terminal from that scripts folder works fine however whenever i run it outside of that folder i get this error

-bash: ./hello.py: No such file or directory

How can i get my scripts to run outside of that folder? Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks very much

You want your terminal to pick up the file, not your Python interpreter, so you should be updating PATH not PYTHONPATH. — Thomas Orozco
– Thomas Orozco, Commented Apr 6, 2012 at 8:17

user1317811 · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-06 16:07:59Z

3

What you'll want to do is to edit your PATH variable which is a list of directories your command shell checks when you run a command that does not begin with / or ./ rather than PYTHONPATH:

export PATH="$PATH:/Users/richn/Documents/scripts"

After you have exported your PATH variable you should be able to confirm that it has exported correctly:

echo $PATH

and afterwards you should be able to run "hello.py" successfully.

answered Apr 6, 2012 at 16:07

user1317811

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