Error while installing BeautifulSoup

Question

My question here is two fold. I am trying to install BeautifulSoup, but facing the below error:

Rahul-MacBook-Air:~ rahul$ sudo easy_install pip
Password:
Searching for pip
Best match: pip 8.1.2
Processing pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg
pip 8.1.2 is already the active version in easy-install.pth
Installing pip script to /usr/local/bin
Installing pip2.7 script to /usr/local/bin
Installing pip2 script to /usr/local/bin

Using /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg
Processing dependencies for pip
Finished processing dependencies for pip

Rahul-MacBook-Air:~ rahul$ pip install beautifulsoup4
Collecting beautifulsoup4
  Using cached beautifulsoup4-4.5.1-py2-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: beautifulsoup4
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 215, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 317, in run
    prefix=options.prefix_path,
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_set.py", line 742, in install
    **kwargs
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_install.py", line 831, in install
    self.move_wheel_files(self.source_dir, root=root, prefix=prefix)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_install.py", line 1032, in move_wheel_files
    isolated=self.isolated,
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/wheel.py", line 346, in move_wheel_files
    clobber(source, lib_dir, True)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/wheel.py", line 317, in clobber
    ensure_dir(destdir)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2-py2.7.egg/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 83, in ensure_dir
    os.makedirs(path)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/os.py", line 157, in makedirs
    mkdir(name, mode)
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/beautifulsoup4-4.5.1.dist-info'

Can somebody please tell me what am I doing wrong here ?

My next question is related to the previous one. I have installed Python 3.5.2

>>> print(sys.version)
3.5.2 (v3.5.2:4def2a2901a5, Jun 26 2016, 10:47:25) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)]
>>> 

However on the terminal it shows me a different version:

Rahul-MacBook-Air:~ rahul$ python -V
Python 2.7.10

So when I try to install BeautifulSoup it starts pointing to Python 2.7 which I think is wrong. It should point to the latest Python version ie 3.5.2

Also I have Python 2.7 pre-installed at /usr/bin/python and Python 3.5.2 is installed at /usr/local/bin/python . How do I default the Python version such that every time I open my terminal it is already pointing to Python 3.5.2

Thanks, Rahul

Answer 1

You have trouble installing BeautifulSoup because the user you're running he commands under doesn't have enough permissions to access a system directory. Try running the command with sudo :

sudo pip install beautifulsoup4

Next, you're saying that you've installed Python 3.5.2, but aren't showing the command you're using to run it. I'm pretty sure it's something like python3 (in any case, not simply python ), so what makes you wonder why python -V shows a different version number? The command python runs a different Python interpreter.

If you want to install anything for Python 3.5, you'll need pip3 , not pip .

You can make python an alias (or a symbolic link) to python3.5 and probably rename the Python 2.7 interpreter to something like python2.7 , if it hasn't been done already.