You presumed correct, and thanks!

Matthew Pirritano, Ph.D.

Research Analyst IV

Medical Services Initiative (MSI)

Orange County Health Care Agency

(714) 568-5648

________________________________

From: Jon K Peck [mailto:peck@us.ibm.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 9:05 AM To: Pirritano, Matthew Cc: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: [SPSSX-L] temp files and python

I presume that you are referring to Python in external mode. External mode generally does not use your preference settings such as for the temporary directory. In order to set that location, create an environment variable named SPSSTMPDIR with the value being a directory. Then SPSS will create a temporary folder under that directory for each session regardless of where you run it from.

Normally you would do this from the Control Panel (System/Advanced/Environment Variables), but you could alternatively create this variable in your Python code before starting SPSS. E.g., import os os.environ["SPSSTMPDIR"] = r"c:\someplace" import spss ...

HTH, Jon Peck SPSS, an IBM Company peck@us.ibm.com 312-651-3435

From:

"Pirritano, Matthew" <MPirritano@ochca.com>

To:

SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Date:

12/30/2009 08:46 AM

Subject:

[SPSSX-L] temp files and python

Sent by:

"SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>

________________________________

Listees, In SPSS I've chosen to route my temporary files to an spss_temp folder. But when I run spss processes using spss.Submit in python the temp files are routed to my personal temp folder under 'Documents and Settings'. How do I change this? I'm winding up with dozens of spss temp folders that wind up clogging things up. Do I need to use a command like tempdir in python? Any help, much appreciated! Thanks Matt Matthew Pirritano, Ph.D. Research Analyst IV Medical Services Initiative (MSI) Orange County Health Care Agency (714) 568-5648