multiple bad interpreter issues with python (even with virtualenv)

Question

I am on mac (mojave osx 10.14) and admittedly I have a pretty messed up python environment.

Recently I have been getting multiple errors such as:

zsh: /usr/local/bin/pip: bad interpreter: /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.6: no such file or directory

zsh: /usr/local/bin/alembic: bad interpreter: /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.6: no such file or directory

zsh: /usr/local/bin/pytest: bad interpreter: /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.6: no such file or directory

This is the case even with creating and entering a virtualenv to work inside of.

In this specific case, I need a python3 virtual env.

When I which python outside the environment, I get /usr/local/bin/python and python -v = Python 2.7.15

Outside this virtualenv, I get these bad interpreter errors.

I create a virtualenv for python3 with virtualenv -p python3 .venv

Without even installing anything, I still get

zsh: /usr/local/bin/alembic: bad interpreter: /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.6: no such file or directory

zsh: /usr/local/bin/pytest: bad interpreter: /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.6: no such file or directory

If I pip uninstall alembic and pip3 uninstall alembic , I get the bad interpreter error still.

I have no idea where it might still be installed and not sure where to start on how to clean up my environment. Would like a fresh start but I don't know if that's possible.

Answer 1

You have removed (uninstalled) /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.6 and the interpreter is used as the shebang in /usr/local/bin/alembic , /usr/local/bin/pytest and perhaps other scripts. The best way to fix them is to reinstall them with a different interpreter. For example:

/usr/bin/python3.6 -m pip install -U alembic pip pytest

/usr/bin/python3.6 is only an example here.

Answer 2

My problem (Mac OS 14.4.1) was with Python 2.7 version, which was missing symlinks. I've solved it by the problem by running:

brew link --overwrite python

As mentioned here