Permanently adding a file path to sys.path in Python

Question

I had a file called example_file.py, which I wanted to use from various other files, so I decided to add example_file.py to sys.path a

Answer 1

This way worked for me:

adding the path that you like:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/you/want/to/add

checking: you can run 'export' cmd and check the output or you can check it using this cmd:

python -c "import sys; print(sys.path)"

Answer 2

There are a few ways. One of the simplest is to create a my-paths.pth file (as described here). This is just a file with the extension .pth that you put into your system site-packages directory. On each line of the file you put one directory name, so you can put a line in there with /path/to/the/ and it will add that directory to the path.

You could also use the PYTHONPATH environment variable, which is like the system PATH variable but contains directories that will be added to sys.path. See the documentation.

Note that no matter what you do, sys.path contains directories not files. You can't "add a file to sys.path". You always add its directory and then you can import the file.