CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonatom-editor
user10678
user10678

Reputation: 159

Python doesn't compile when executed from the terminal, but compiles when run from atom editor

I'm running this code:

import os

file_path = os.path.dirname(__file__)
print file_path

accel = open(os.path.dirname(__file__) + '/../imu/accel.txt')

First I ran it from my atom editor using the 'script' package and it outputted:

enter image description here

But when I ran the same code from the terminal I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "imu_pub2.py", line 9, in <module>
    accel = open(os.path.dirname(__file__) + '/../imu/accel.txt')
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/../imu/accel.txt'

Why is this happening?

The compile error happens at the last line of the code. For some reason in the terminal the print statement is not printing anything. The problem starts there.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 473

Answers (1)

ottomeister
ottomeister

Reputation: 5828

Change os.path.dirname(__file__) to os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))

The problem is that when you run your script as python imu_pub2.py the __file__ variable is set to "imu_pub2.py". That string is just a filename with no directory part, so dirname(__file__) produces an empty string. That means that file_path is an empty string, which is why nothing shows up when you print it. Since the result of dirname is empty, accel gets set to just "/../imu/accel.txt" and apparently no such file exists on your machine so the open fails.

Using abspath will get the full directory path for __file__, and that will let dirname produce the result you want.

BTW, kra3 is correct when he says to use os.path.join instead of just concatenating strings together. But that's not the cause of the bug.

Upvotes: 1

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