Python Standard Library not installed?

Question

I'm fairly new to Python and recently started development on a new mac mini. As you know it comes with 2.7 installed.

The problem I'm running across is the Standard Library doesn't seem to be installed.

I get a syntax error when importing modules (SyntaxError: invalid syntax).

I was running this code with the argv datafile.csv

import csv
import sys

stocks.csv = argv
f = open(sys.argv[1], 'rt')

try:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    for row in reader:
        print row
finally:
    f.close()

After awhile of this I decided to run the interpreter and get help.

When I ran the interpreter and do help(csv) or most other modules (sys works just fine) I get this error:

>>> import csv
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "csv.py", line 1
    import 
          ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Do I need to install the library or am I accessing it wrong?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Do you have a file in the current directory named csv.py with a blank import statement on line 1? Python searches the current directory for imports before it looks at system directories.