Re: webbrowser.open works in IDLE and cmd shell but not from cygwin prompt

Gregory Bloom wrote:
I'm running Python 2.5 under Windows. If I fire up IDLE and enter:

import webbrowser
url = 'http://www.python.org'
webbrowser.open_new(url)

it works like a champ, opening the page in Firefox. Same thing goes
from a Windows cmd shell: it works as advertised.

But if I open a cygwin bash shell and try the same thing from a python
prompt, I get:

import webbrowser
url = 'http://www.python.org'
webbrowser.open_new(url)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "C:\Python25\lib\webbrowser.py", line 60, in open_new
return open(url, 1)
File "C:\Python25\lib\webbrowser.py", line 55, in open
if browser.open(url, new, autoraise):
File "C:\Python25\lib\webbrowser.py", line 185, in open
p = subprocess.Popen(cmdline, close_fds=True, preexec_fn=setsid)
File "C:\Python25\lib\subprocess.py", line 551, in __init__
raise ValueError("close_fds is not supported on Windows "
ValueError: close_fds is not supported on Windows platforms

What's up with that?

It's not a Cygwin issue, really. This occurs when one of ["firefox", "firebird", "seamonkey", "mozilla", "netscape", "opera"] is in your path. Your Cygwin environment must be set so one of these is in your path when it isn't normally.

You should also submit a bug.

And, more to the point, how can I use webbrowser from scripts launched under
> cygwin?

If you're using native Windows Python as you seem to be, try webbrowser.get("windows-default").open_new(url)

If you want to use Cygwin Python instead, I submitted a patch more than 1.5 years ago to allow it, but it hasn't been reviewed:

http://python.org/sf/1244861
--
Michael Hoffman
.

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