IDLE fails to launch if 2.3 is installed to "Program Files"

[clumma]

BPO	780451
Nosy	@theller, @kbkaiser

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/kbkaiser'
closed_at = <Date 2003-08-14.15:03:57.000>
created_at = <Date 2003-07-30.20:03:19.000>
labels = ['expert-installation']
title = 'IDLE fails to launch if 2.3 is installed to "Program Files"'
updated_at = <Date 2003-08-14.15:03:57.000>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/clumma'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2003-08-14.15:03:57.000>
actor = 'kbk'
assignee = 'kbk'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Installation']
creation = <Date 2003-07-30.20:03:19.000>
creator = 'clumma'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 780451
keywords = []
message_count = 5.0
messages = ['17478', '17479', '17480', '17481', '17482']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['theller', 'clumma', 'kbk', 'jorend']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue780451'
versions = ['Python 2.3']

[clumma]

Reproducible on Windows XP SP1.

If one changes the install path to
"C:\Program Files\Python\", the resulting IDLE shortcut
does get pythonw.exe running but fails to produce any
window, even if the OS is restarted after the install.

If one installs to "C:\Python23\" or "C:\Python\", it works.
So I assume it has something to do with whitespace in
the path.

Please notice that it is strongly recommended to install
Python in a path without space

Where is it recommended? The installer should warn the
user.

one frequently needs to type the path on the command
line or put it into wrapper scripts; in either case,
spaces cause problems.

So recommending that the install occur in \Python23\
is fine. But with ~x notation and quotation marks, there
should be no trouble supporting whitespace on Windows.

[jorend]

Logged In: YES
user_id=18139

Yep, this bit me, too.

This bug is caused by:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=436259&group_id=5470&atid=105470
[ 436259 ] [Windows] exec*/spawn* problem with spaces in args

As that bug notes, distutils already works around this.
Idle could borrow the same workaround, except with P_NOWAIT.

Hey, maybe the workaround could be polished and published as
"os.spawn(executable, args, env=None, wait=False,
search_path=False)". Neat.

Cheers, and thanks for Python.

[theller]

Logged In: YES
user_id=11105

Should the windows installer be modified to warn when the
path contains spaces?

[kbkaiser]

Logged In: YES
user_id=149084

Now works with spaces in path.
Fixed at PyShell.py Rev 1.82
Backported to release22-maint

[kbkaiser]

Logged In: YES
user_id=149084

um, release23-maint