[Jython-users] Re: Jython-users digest, Vol 1 #1292 - 8 msgs

[Daniel L. <dan...@ma...>]

On Jan 13, 2005, at 20:16, jyt...@li... 
wrote:

> Message: 6
> From: "Laurent Ploix" <lau...@la...>
> To: "'Badal, Chris F'" <chr...@hp...>,
> 	<jyt...@li...>
> Subject: RE : [Jython-users] Trouble loading classes at runtime
> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:44:34 +0100
>
> You need to use slashes instead of backslashes when adding path to
> sys.path.
>
> Don't ask me why.

I don't know Mr. Van Rossum personally, by I believe it was because the 
Unix community, where Python was invented, had to standardize on 
something and he chose Unix style directory path separators which was 
intuitive on the platform. The 'back slash' is a common character for 
escapes e.g. \n \t \r and well as in regular expressions, so it would 
have been confusing to use that for directory paths just in python and 
nowhere else on the platform just to cater to Microsoft's use of a 
different path separator for DOS in the event Python was ported to 
Windows one day. Of course I could be wrong.

<IMHO>
In the case of Java unfortunately, Sun took the 'low road' and did not 
standardize as the creator of Python did,  and  allowed different 
'classpath' separators for Java based on the platform. As a result, 
this has created confusion and a lot of forum traffic and discussion in 
Java and Jython groups ever since. It pays to stand on principle in the 
end--keep it simple and standard. Thanks Mr. Van Rossum.
</IMHO>

As an aside, one can check the system dependent path and other 
separators for Python using the 'os' module as in these result for Mac 
OS X (POSIX-compliant Unix) case :

 >>> import os
 >>> os.pathsep
':'
 >>> os.sep
'/'
 >>>

The first being the shell 'path' including 'classpath' and the second 
the file path separator. As always, RTFM.

>
> But if you want to import the class aa.bb in cc directory, you need to
> have your path pointed to cc, not cc.aa
>
> bye
>
> Laurent Ploix
>