Find where python is installed (if it isn't default dir)

Python is on my machine, I just don't know where, if I type python in terminal it will open Python 2.6.4, this isn't in it's default directory, there surely is a way of finding it's install location from here?

11 Answers

sys has some useful stuff:

$ python Python 2.6.6 (r266:84297, Aug 24 2010, 18:13:38) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import sys >>> sys.executable 'c:\\Python26\\python.exe' >>> sys.exec_prefix 'c:\\Python26' >>> >>> print '\n'.join(sys.path) c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\nose-1.0.0-py2.6.egg C:\Windows\system32\python26.zip c:\Python26\DLLs c:\Python26\lib c:\Python26\lib\plat-win c:\Python26\lib\lib-tk c:\Python26 c:\Python26\lib\site-packages c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\win32 c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\win32\lib c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\Pythonwin c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\wx-2.8-msw-unicode 

In unix (mac os X included) terminal you can do

which python 

and it will tell you.

Platform independent solution in one line is

Python 2:

python -c "import sys; print sys.executable" 

Python 3:

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

For Windows CMD run: where python

For Windows PowerShell run: Get-Command python

Have a look at sys.path:

>>> import sys >>> print(sys.path) 

You should be able to type "which python" and it will print out a path to python.

or you can type:

python >>> import re >>> re.__file__ 

and it will print a path to the re module and you'll see where python is that way.

To find all the installations of Python on Windows run this at the command prompt:

dir site.py /s 

Make sure you are in the root drive. You will see something like this.

If you are using wiindows OS (I am using windows 10 ) just type

where python 

in command prompt ( cmd )

It will show you the directory where you have installed .

For Windows Users:

If the python command is not in your $PATH environment var.

Open PowerShell and run these commands to find the folder

cd \ ls *ython* -Recurse -Directory 

That should tell you where python is installed

1. First search for PYTHON IDLE from search bar

2. Open the IDLE and use below commands.

   import sys print(sys.path)

3. It will give you the path where the python.exe is installed. For eg: C:\Users\\...\python.exe

4. Add the same path to system environment variable.

On windows search python,then right click and click on "Open file location".That's how I did