pip config --editor notepad.exe edit fails to create pip.ini on windows

[meta-forte]

Environment

• pip version: pip 19.0.3 from c:\python37\lib\site-packages\pip (python 3.7)
• Python version: 3.7.3
• OS: Windows 10 Professional

Description
run pip config --editor notepad.exe edit on windows
Notepad shows an alert: The system cannot find the path specified.

Expected behavior
PIP should create c:\users\user-id\AppData\Roaming\pip\pip.ini before launching notepad.

How to Reproduce

1. On windows 10, install python afresh. The folder c:\users\user-id\AppData\Roaming\pip should not exist on the system
2. Then run pip config --editor notepad.exe edit
   3.Notepad shows an alert: The system cannot find the path specified.

However, when the same is tried using Visual studio code. It works fine.

This is a limitation with notepad.exe. I tried notepad a\b.txt and got the same error. This bug really belongs to notepad.

However, pip can handle the scenario by creating/touching the pip\pip.ini befpre launching the editor.

[uranusjr]

Would you mind investigate a bit what does work with Notepad? From the the post, it seems that:

• Notepad cannot handle a\b.txt if the file does not exist
• Notepad can correctly handle a\b.txt if the file exists

But I vaguely recall that Notepad can handle creating new files. Does notepad.exe a.txt work?

[pfmoore]

Notepad will ask if you want to create the file if it doesn't exist. The problem here is that the directory that contains the file doesn't exist, and notepad can't create that.

So a different option to the ones you mentioned:

• Notepad cannot handle a\b.txt if the directory a does not exist

This isn't related to notepad as such - Vim won't create directories automatically either.

[uranusjr]

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for the explanation. Would it be a good idea to automatically create parent directories (makedirs) but not the config file then?