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.

Answer 2

I had this error because I was providing a string of arguments to subprocess.call instead of an array of arguments. To prevent this, use shlex.split:

import shlex, subprocess
command_line = "ls -a"
args = shlex.split(command_line)
p = subprocess.Popen(args)

Answer 3

Use os.path.abspath():

os.chdir(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(sys.argv[0])))

sys.argv[0] in your case is just a script name, no directory, so os.path.dirname() returns an empty string.

os.path.abspath() turns that into a proper absolute path with directory name.

Answer 4

I was compiling the android code v4.4 on Ubuntu 14.04, when I met the same problem of Python, no such file or directory.

It ends as I installed below libraries. So I think maybe it will help someone at some occasion. The python script takes it for granted that some lib exists in the system.

sudo apt install gperf
sudo apt install  libxml2-utils
sudo apt install libbison-dev