Why use sys path append path instead of sys path insert 1 path

Question

Edit  based on a Ulf Rompe s comment  it is important you use  1  instead of  0   otherwise you will break sys path   I have been doing python for quite a while now  over a year   and I am always confused as to why people recommend you use sys path append   instead of sys path insert     Let me demonstrate   Let s say I am working on a module named PyWorkbooks  that is installed on my computer   but I am simultaneously working on a different module  let s say PyJob  that incorporates PyWorkbooks   As I m working on PyJob I find errors in PyWorkbooks that I am correcting  so I would like to import a development version   There are multiple ways to work on both  I could put my PyWorkbooks project inside of PyJob  for instance   but sometimes I will still need to play with the path   However  I cannot simply do a sys path append   to the folder where PyWorkbooks is at   Why   Because python will find my installed PyWorkbooks first   This is why you have to do a sys path insert 1  path to dev pyworkbooks   In summary   sys path append path to dev pyworkbooks  import PyWorkbooks   does NOT import dev pyworkbooks  imports installed one   or   sys path insert 1  path to dev pyworkbooks    based on comments you should use   1 not 0   import PyWorkbooks   imports correct file   This has caused a few hangups for me in the past  and I would really like it if we  as a community  started recommending sys path insert 1  path   as if you are manually inserting a path I think it is safe to say that that is the path you want to use   Or do I have something wrong   It s a question that sometimes bothers me and I wanted it in the open

User · Answer

you are confusing the concept of appending and prepending. the following code is prepending:

sys.path.insert(1,'/thePathToYourFolder/')

it places the new information at the beginning (well, second, to be precise) of the search sequence that your interpreter will go through. sys.path.append() puts things at the very end of the search sequence.

it is advisable that you use something like virtualenv instead of manually coding your package directories into the PYTHONPATH everytime. for setting up various ecosystems that separate your site-packages and possible versions of python, read these two blogs:

if you do decide to move down the path to environment isolation you would certainly benefit by looking into virtualenvwrapper: http://www.doughellmann.com/docs/virtualenvwrapper/

User · Answer

If you have multiple versions of a package   module  you need to be using virtualenv  emphasis mine    virtualenv is a tool to create isolated Python environments  The basic problem being addressed is one of dependencies and versions  and indirectly permissions  Imagine you have an application that needs version 1 of LibFoo  but another application requires version 2  How can you use both these applications  If you install everything into  usr lib python2 7 site-packages  or whatever your platform   s standard location is   it   s easy to end up in a situation where you unintentionally upgrade an application that shouldn   t be upgraded  Or more generally  what if you want to install an application and leave it be  If an application works  any change in its libraries or the versions of those libraries can break the application  Also  what if you can   t install packages into the global site-packages directory  For instance  on a shared host  In all these cases  virtualenv can help you  It creates an environment that has its own installation directories  that doesn   t share libraries with other virtualenv environments  and optionally doesn   t access the globally installed libraries either    That s why people consider insert 0   to be wrong -- it s an incomplete  stopgap solution to the problem of managing multiple environments

User · Answer

If you really need to use sys path insert  consider leaving sys path 0  as it is   sys path insert 1  path to dev pyworkbooks    This could be important since 3rd party code may rely on sys path documentation conformance      As initialized upon program startup  the first item of this list    path 0   is the directory containing the script that was used to   invoke the Python interpreter

[python] Why use sys.path.append(path) instead of sys.path.insert(1, path)?

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