Test if executable exists in Python?
I know this is an ancient question, but you can use distutils.spawn.find_executable
. This has been documented since python 2.4 and has existed since python 1.6.
import distutils.spawndistutils.spawn.find_executable("notepad.exe")
Also, Python 3.3 now offers shutil.which()
.
Easiest way I can think of:
def which(program): import os def is_exe(fpath): return os.path.isfile(fpath) and os.access(fpath, os.X_OK) fpath, fname = os.path.split(program) if fpath: if is_exe(program): return program else: for path in os.environ["PATH"].split(os.pathsep): exe_file = os.path.join(path, program) if is_exe(exe_file): return exe_file return None
Edit: Updated code sample to include logic for handling case where provided argument is already a full path to the executable, i.e. "which /bin/ls". This mimics the behavior of the UNIX 'which' command.
Edit: Updated to use os.path.isfile() instead of os.path.exists() per comments.
Edit: path.strip('"')
seems like the wrong thing to do here. Neither Windows nor POSIX appear to encourage quoted PATH items.