On 11/22/2010 8:33 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 9:40 PM, Glenn Linderman<v+pyt...@g.nevcal.com> wrote:
In reviewing my notes from my experimentations with CGIHTTPServer
(Python2.6) and then http.server (Python 3.2a4), I note one behavior I
haven't reported as a bug, nor do I know where to start to figure it out,
other than experimentally.
The experiment: launching CGIHTTPServer without environment variables, by
the simple expedient of using a batch file to unset all the existing
environment variables, and then launching Python2.6 with CGIHTTPServer.
So it failed early: random.py fails at line 110 (Python 2.6).
What specific traceback do you get? In my copy of the code that line says
a = long(_hexlify(_urandom(16)), 16)
and I could just imagine that _urandom() fails for some reason to do
with the environment (it is a reference to os.urandom()), which, being
part of the C library code, might depend on the environment.
But you're not giving enough info to debug this.
Yep, that's the line. I'll have to re-run the scenario, but will do it
on 3.2a4, hopefully tonight or tomorrow, to get the traceback.
I suppose it is possible that some environment variables are used by Python
directly (but I can't seem to find a documented list of them) although I
would expect that usage to be optional, with fall-back defaults when they
don't exist.
That is certainly the idea, but the fallbacks may not always be nice.
Environment variables used by Python or the stdlib itself are supposed
to be named PYTHON<whatever> if they are Python-specific, and there's
a way to disable all of these (-E). But there are other environment
variables (HOME and PATH come to mind) that have a broader definition
and that are used in some part of the stdlib. Plus, as I mentioned,
who knows what the non-Python C library uses (well, somebody probably
knows, but I don't know of a central source that we can actually trust
across the many platforms where Python runs).
OK, thanks for the philosophy statement. That's what I didn't know,
being new.
I suppose it is even possible that some Windows APIs might
depend on some environment variables, but I expected that the registry had
replaced such usage completely, by now, with the environment variables
mostly being a convenience tool for batch files, or for optional, temporary
alteration of particular settings.
That sounds like wishful thinking. :-)
Well, wishful thinking from me regarding the Windows and the registry is
that Windows would be better off without a registry. But it seemed like
their direction was instead to do away with environment variables, but
in any case, I have little idea if they've achieved it, but should have
achieved something in 6.1 versions of Windows!
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