Question

I recently upgraded my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard install to 10.6 Snow Leopard, and with that came an upgraded version of Python, 2.6.1 (instead if 2.5.1). Now when I type python in the Terminal i still get

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54869, Apr 18 2007, 22:08:04) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5367)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

I looked in /usr/bin/ and found that to get Python 2.6 I have to type python2.6.

The question is: How do I make the python command map to Python 2.6?

Answer 1

It’s easy:

defaults write com.apple.versioner.python Version 2.6

See man python for a complete explanation from Apple.

Also, one gotcha: make sure you are running the Python that came with your computer and not some other one that you installed. Do this by typing which python at your command prompt. It should point to /usr/bin/python. I only mention this because my default is 2.6 under Snow Leopard (it was 2.5 when I was using Leopard). So the fact that you are getting 2.5 may indicate that there’s something else in your path.

Answer 2

Assuming you're using bash, type:

% type -a python

That will show you all "python" executables, aliases, shell builtins (likely none) or bash functions in your PATH.

This should help you better identify what's going on here.