[ python program doesn't work when opened by run ]

I'm using Windows 7 x64, when I open my program by Windows - run it does not work properly. It stars, but the commands does not work the way they do, when I double click it.

/run cmd /c start "" "C:\Python27\Scripts\bot.bat"
/run cmd /c start python "C:\Python27\Scripts\bot.py"
/run python "C:\Python27\Scripts\bot.py"

I tried these and all of them, failed. While a simple double click on the .bat file or the .py work.

The bat file just calls for the python file

@echo off
start "" "C:\Python27\Scripts\bot.py"

The error when I open it by Windows - Run is

[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'list.txt'

list.txt is inside Scripts folder and when opened by double click it always worked.

Update

I open the files for read using

g = open("list.txt","r")

and again for write:

g = open("list.txt","w")

I've tried James solution and it worked, but since I have many methods using these, I will get a lot of work as it is not just find and replace, it envolves indentation and also the names of lists changes according which method.

Answer 1

---

You'll want to do something like this in your application:

import os
import sys

with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0]), "lists.txt"), "r") as f:
    # do something with lists.txt

This removes the assumption that lists.txt will be in the current directory or similar.

Note: that sys.argv[0] should be the "full absolute path" to the program being executed and hopefully C:\Python27\Scripts\bot.py on your system.

Update: Alternative to using sys.argv[0] (Thank you Alex Taylor) as a means of "determining your entrypoint's directory" you could also use __file__ which is a "global" in Python module(s) that is the "full path" to that module. The only caveat here is that this won't work if your "package" is zipped or otherwise an importable archive. See: __file__

Answer 2

---

Similar to James' answer, but using the __file__ macro as the way of getting the currently executing script:

import os.path

with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), 'list.txt'), 'r') as list_file:
    list_data = list_file.read()

The issue is that the working directory is set to the location you double-clicked from, but launching from the command line in the ways you have provided does not. Opening a command prompt to the location of the script and launching from there would also work since the file would be in the working directory.

The __file___ macro is generally considered to be the best way of determining a python script location.