15. user
— User-specific configuration hook¶
Deprecated since version 2.6: The user
module has been removed in Python 3.
As a policy, Python doesn’t run user-specified code on startup of Python
programs. (Only interactive sessions execute the script specified in the
PYTHONSTARTUP
environment variable if it exists).
However, some programs or sites may find it convenient to allow users to have a standard customization file, which gets run when a program requests it. This module implements such a mechanism. A program that wishes to use the mechanism must execute the statement
import user
The user
module looks for a file .pythonrc.py
in the user’s home
directory and if it can be opened, executes it (using execfile()
) in its
own (the module user
‘s) global namespace. Errors during this phase are
not caught; that’s up to the program that imports the user
module, if it
wishes. The home directory is assumed to be named by the HOME
environment variable; if this is not set, the current directory is used.
The user’s .pythonrc.py
could conceivably test for sys.version
if it
wishes to do different things depending on the Python version.
A warning to users: be very conservative in what you place in your
.pythonrc.py
file. Since you don’t know which programs will use it,
changing the behavior of standard modules or functions is generally not a good
idea.
A suggestion for programmers who wish to use this mechanism: a simple way to let
users specify options for your package is to have them define variables in their
.pythonrc.py
file that you test in your module. For example, a module
spam
that has a verbosity level can look for a variable
user.spam_verbose
, as follows:
import user
verbose = bool(getattr(user, "spam_verbose", 0))
(The three-argument form of getattr()
is used in case the user has not
defined spam_verbose
in their .pythonrc.py
file.)
Programs with extensive customization needs are better off reading a program-specific customization file.
Programs with security or privacy concerns should not import this module; a
user can easily break into a program by placing arbitrary code in the
.pythonrc.py
file.
Modules for general use should not import this module; it may interfere with the operation of the importing program.
See also
- Module
site
- Site-wide customization mechanism.