Python: OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ''

Question

I have a 100 lines, 3 years old python scraper that now bug. Starting lines are:

import urllib, re, os, sys, time    # line 1: import modules os.chdir(os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0])) # line 2: all works in script's folder > relative address # (rest of my script here!) 

When run,

$cd /my/folder/ $python script.py 

I receive the error:

python script.py  Traceback (most recent call last):   File "script.py", line 2, in <module>     os.chdir(os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0])) OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '' 

How should I read this error and what to do ?

Answer 1

Have you noticed that you don't get the error if you run

python ./script.py 

instead of

python script.py 

This is because sys.argv[0] will read ./script.py in the former case, which gives os.path.dirname something to work with. When you don't specify a path, sys.argv[0] reads simply script.py, and os.path.dirname cannot determine a path.