python script doesn't execute when calling it from shell

Question

I have a python 3 program in file foo the file has execution permissions, and the first line of the script is

#!/usr/bin/python3

When I run the file from python directly, i.e:

/usr/bin/python3 foo 3 boo

Everything runs perfectly well, but when I try to run the program by calling the file name I get:

foo 3 boo
foo: Command not found.

Even when specifying the relative or full path to the script I get the same response.

./foo 3 boo
./foo: Command not found.
/full/path/to/the/file/foo 3 boo
/full/path/to/the/file/foo: Command not found.

Some more info that was requested:

head -2 foo
#!/usr/bin/python3
which python3
/usr/bin/python3

Working from tcsh, where is the problem?

I'm working on a remote university computer through ssh, could it be the case that the sysadmins somehow prevent this?

• Anton: Have you made your script executable?
• SIMEL: @Anton, yes I did
• Raoslaw Szamszur: @Anton read carefully the question. He explicitly said it have.
• Anton: @RaoslawSzamszur Yep, my bad. And the answers below are correct
• Karn Kumar: @SIMEL, can you do show the head -2 foo & which python output from terminal?

Answer 1

You need to specify the absolute path of the script. Try

./foo 3 boo

while in the same directory as the script. Otherwise, the shell will only look in your PATH for something named foo, which doesn't exist.

• SIMEL: I get the same response, even when stating the full path to the script, I get the same response.

Answer 2

You must give the path to the file

./foo

If you just call "foo", the shell will look in the environment variable $PATH the folder that contains the "foo" binary, and he will not find it ...

Answer 3

I'm using python3, just an example illustration..

Just a test script ..

$ cat test.py
#!/python/v3.6.1/bin/python3
import os
print(os.system("ls"))
$ which python3
/python/v3.6.1/bin/python3

Permission to make it executable.. i'm have doubt if the script foo is executable in your case..

$ chmod +x test.py

Test Run..

$ ./test.py
a.py Backup File_Write_Method NWK-old Python_aritsTest Python_Ftp Python_Mail Python_Primer test.py
argpass BASH Network_DeOps Python-3.6.3 Python_Dump Python_FTP Python_Panda readme_python tmp
awk.sh dnspython nslookup Python-3.6.3.tar.xz Python_excep Python_ldap Python_Parsers Regular_Expr tt.csv
0

It might be shell problem as i reproduced the tcsh shell & it fails to run..

$ tcsh
$ ./test
./test: Command not found.

but it runs , when i run it like below..

tcsh -c ./test.py

• Karn Kumar: @wpercy, thats weird :)

Answer 4

Assuming your script is executable and you have python3 in /usr/bin/python3. I think you are trying to run your script from a partition mounted with the noexec argument to check if it is the problem you should run:

mount | grep <partition> | grep noexec

If I'm right you can just mount the partition with the exec option or move your script elsewhere.