Many factors could lead to the error: ‘pip’ is not recognized as an internal or external command. Two of the most common ones are Python’s or pip’s incorrect installation and lacking path in the system environment variables.

This tutorial deeply explains the concept of environment variables, system paths, and pip’s way of storing packages to enable you to track the source of the error comfortably.

It then takes you through a step-by-step way to solve the error. Apart from Windows, you will see how to solve related errors in Linux. What is more? Read on to find out.

❒What Are Environment Variables?

Understanding environment variables is one the most crucial steps to solving pip’s errors.

A computing environment is a platform consisting of the operating system and the processor. On the other hand, a variable is a place for storing a value. The variable can be binary, text, number, filename, or any other data type. It gets its name during creation and can be displayed, updated, and deleted.

The combination of a computing environment and variable is an environment variable, a dynamic value affecting the behavior of a computer process. A computer process is an instance of a program.

# Determine the value of a variable

echo %VARIABLE% # in Windows

echo $VARIABLE # in Linux # display

%VARIABLE% # in Windows

env # command for printing all environment variables OR

printenv # show a single environment variable in Linux.

Features Of Environment Variables

• They can be created, read, edited, and deleted.
• Each process has its set of environment variables. A newly created process inherits its parent’s same runtime environment.
• Environment variables occur in scripts and the command line.
• Shell scripts and batch files use environment variables to communicate data and processes to child processes or temporarily store data.
• A running process can access the environment variables for configuration reasons.
• A collection of environment variables behave like an associative array, with keys and values in strings.
• Environment variables may differ depending on the operating system.
• Windows stores the default environment variable values in the registry and sets them in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

Examples Of Environment Variables

Here are the typical environment variables that interact with pip.

PATH

The path variable lists the directory where your system searches executables. It enables you to view the location of a directory without typing the full path.

In Windows, the path variables are stored in C:\Windows or C:\Windows\System32. In Linux, they originate from the user’s bin or sbin file.

HOME

It shows the default path to the user’s home directory. For instance, HOME//APPDATA stores app settings in Windows. In Linux, the settings are found in HOME/{.App Name}.

In Windows, the misplaced APPDATA lands in the USERPROFILE environment variable, which should instead be used for dialogs to allow a user to choose between folders. LOCALAPPDATA stores local app settings.

TEMP

It stores temporary processes.

Now that you understand how environment variables play a massive in package working, you should find out specific ways to solve pip’s errors.

❒Solution 1: Ensure Pip Is Installed Correctly And Up-to-date

Windows

Pip packages are stored in Python’s installation directory. For instance, installing Python in C:\Python\ stores the default library in C:\Python\Lib\, while the third-party packages reside in C:\Python\Lib\site-packages.

If you install a specific Python version as a stand-alone, pip packages reside in APPDATA.

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python<version-subversion>\site-packages\ # the version can be 310 for Python 3.10 or 38 for Python 3.8

If you install a pip package that does not use a specific location, it lands in Scripts.

C:\Python310\Scripts\ 

Pip gets installed by default when you install most Python 3 versions. You can confirm the installation by checking the pip’s version or help command.

pip -V

# OR

pip help

You should get pip’s version version, installation folder, and Python version running it.

pip 22.0.4 from C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\pip (python 3.10)

Otherwise, you could get an error,

'pip' is not recognized as an internal or external command

OR

Python is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

if you try running python.

python

If you run the above commands without seeing Python, pip, or the installed package, you should download Python.

Install pip as a stand-alone package if pip is still unavailable after installing Python. Download get-pip, and run the following command on the command prompt.

python get-pip.py

Lastly, you can upgrade the pip version and check if the error persists.

python -m pip install --upgrade pip

If the problem is still not solved, try adding Python to the system path variable, as explained in solution 2 of this tutorial.

Linux

The usr is one of the most crucial folders in Linux. It stores information like user binaries, libraries, documentation, and header files. It is where packages that pip manages get installed.

Say we want to install Python 3.10 on Ubuntu 20.04. We can do that by downloading Python from the source or using the deadsnakes custom PPA as follows.

# Update the system, ensuring the required packages are installed.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y # Install the required dependency needed to add the custom PPAs.

sudo apt install software-properties-common -y # Add the deadsnakes PPA to the list of APT package manager sources.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa # Download Python 3.10

sudo apt install python3.10 # Confirm successful installation

python3.10 --version

The next step is to locate pip.

# pip

pip --version

# OR

pip -V

pip list -v # pip3

pip3 -V

pip list -v

Either way, you may get the following errors.

# pip

Command 'pip' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install python3-pip # pip3

Command 'pip3' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install python3-pip

You get a similar error when you try installing a package.

# pip

pip install django

Command 'pip' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install python3-pip # pip3

pip3 install django

Command 'pip3' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install python3-pip

Let’s install pip.

sudo apt install python3-pip

❒Solution 2: Add The Path Of Pip Installation To The PATH System Variable

You can use the terminal or the GUI.

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Python<version-subversion>\Scripts" # For example

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Python310\Scripts" # for Python 3.10

To use the GUI,

1. copy to the full path of the system variable: C:\<username>\steve\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\Scripts
2. Type Edit the Environment Variables on the search bar.
3. On the pop-up window, click on the Advanced tab followed by Environment Variables.

4. You are presented with two boxes. Highlight path on the first box followed by the Edit button below the box.

5. Click on New, paste the script path you had copied earlier, followed by OK on the bottommost part of the screen.

Conclusion

You have learned the leading causes of the error, “‘pip’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,” while installing packages and two typical ways to correct it.

You can check whether your installation was successful and whether the pip is updated and lies in the correct path. Otherwise, you can take the most appropriate step, as explained in this tutorial.

Please stay tuned and subscribe for more interesting discussions.

Here is Cazny a project management tool for freelancers and am happy to share it with you. It is a feature-packed, hosted, and ready-to-use software. It enables you to better project management and saves your precious time.

It is an exclusive tool for freelancers to manage the full lifecycle of a project. The proposal, contract, client CRM, project, task, timesheet, invoices, and payment are the broad areas catered to.

Try Cazny Free

Among all the good things Cazny has, one thing that I wish to highlight is the UI/UX design. All it will take is just 5 minutes to start using it to the fullest of its capability.

A spreadsheet will not help you to scale your business. You start as a freelancer, progress to creating a tiny team, then you graduate to become a freelance agency. You need an all-in-one tool and that is Cazny.

You definitely need a good tool to embark and succeed on this journey. Cazny will be a trustable subordinate for you. It will not be an overhead definitely.

It is brought to you with ritually followed design principles. Best-in-class security, ease of use, and analytical information are core features of Cazny.

Why Cazny?

If you answer “Yes” to any of the below questions, then Cazny is an option for you. If you say “Yes”, multiple times, then it is high time you start using Cazny.

• Are you expecting to manage projects, clients, invoices, and payments in a single place?
• Are you looking for a real-time connector that relates your freelancer’s projects, clients, invoices, and payments?
• Do you expect to hire a flawless assistant to manage your running projects and tasks?
• Do you have all your business data spread over assorted spreadsheets?
• Do you frequently smash your head to get basic stats about the currently running projects?
• Do you still use the age-old practice of unorganized email threads to manage projects?
• Do you depend on anybody to know the open tasks of your projects?
• Does it take an hour to get your income for the financial year?
• Are you looking for a graphical presentation of your payment statistics?
• Are you using multiple online software for client records, project-task management, invoicing, etc?

All the above questions have one magic answer, that is, Cazny. Go deeper into this article to see what is Cazny and how it is going to play a major role in your business.

How did it evolve?

When there is a boom in the number of running projects, management itself becomes a big project. My freelancing business is getting better by every day. As a freelancer, I struggled to deal with management work in parallel with the development and delivery.

We built software to help manage my day-to-day administrative activities. It got me out of this management struggle and saved me precious billable hours. It not only has relieved but also helped to scale up my freelance business.

Before Cazny I used to accept only a couple of projects in parallel. Now I have a team and do 10+ projects in parallel. See, what my clients are saying about my work. It became possible with the help of Cazny.

What is inside Cazny?

I have written more than 100 ‘what is inside’ tables of content for different products and projects. But here it will be a huge list if I add bullets for everything inside Cazny.

Let me present you a shrunk version of the list with key functionality.

Key features

1. One unified software for all the needs of a freelancer for management
2. Client CRM
3. Flexible task management
4. Timesheet log
5. Income analytics
6. Invoice generation
7. Sales automation and payment tracking

Other features

1. Custom fields
2. Multi-language
3. Simple search and advanced filters
4. Connecting entities for relevancy
5. Data security

Try Cazny Free

Free signup and easy membership creation

Cazny allows you to signup for free with unlimited access to all features.

Members can subscribe at any moment within the trial period.

Project management with client CRM and tasks

This section describes the heart of this project management tool.

The complete tool goes around with these three core entities client, project, and task. The other entities of the project management tool are dependent on these primary assets.

Project scheduling with timesheet

Timesheet log is a critical component of a freelancer’s earnings. In my earlier days of being a freelancer, I lost income because of unorganized timesheet records.

All we need is a good tool and basic discipline. Cazny’s timesheet module is intuitive and easy to record task activities.

Invoice for payments

As a freelancer, you can survive without a management tool for all the features but one. A professional invoice is a key to building your brand as a freelancer and continuing business with a client.

Cazny has an intuitive, WYSIWYG editor for generating invoices. It populates and drops down the dependent client/project data to generate data.

It is highly customizable to suit your business. It has more options that are too user-friendly in the context of invoice generation. Example,

1. Preview invoice.
2. Generate and download PDF.
3. Share invoice to a client with just a click of a button.
4. Email invoice from within the tool.

Sales automation and payment tracking

Payments tracking at their best with Cazny both by data tables and graphs. Comparatively, the payment graph view helps freelancers to have a quick bird’s eye view of the income.

This is one of my long-time issues of searching for payment data manually on emails to calculate the income at the stage. Combined with filter, data table and charts, income analysis is just a breeze with Cazny.

More features of Cazny

All functionality uses rich features to provide a good user experience.

Custom fields

For each freelancer, the client, project, and task have unique columns. This project management tool is designed with minimal and most wanted fields.

If you need additional fields, this feature helps you to add more. It contains add, edit, and remove options on each entity.

Multi-language implementation

The multi-language implementation is made across the site. It is configurable by every member to suit your preference. For public pages, the language can be specified by choosing the option in the header dropdown.

The member can choose their language on the account settings page. Based on this selection, the application framework loads the content. Now you can manage your projects in your own native language.

Common search and criteria based filter

Cazny provides an efficient search feature. It has two types of filters to search among the project management tool.

1. A simple keyword-based common search filter.
2. A Field-specific criteria-based filter form.

Search is very quick and seamless.

Connecting entities for relevancy

It is all about loading relevant data based on the parent entity. This is to load,

• Clients by member
• Projects by clients
• Tasks by projects
• Timesheet by tasks
• Invoice to clients
• Payments by project, invoices

Data security

It assures for security and protection of member-submitted data. It follows global norms and state-of-the-art tech to protect your data. Architected and developed be members with good experience. Also, a third-party security audit is conducted to ascertain the quality of the software.

Conclusion

As a seasoned freelancer with an agency, we built Cazny for our internal purposes. This has helped us to scale up our business by freeing up our valuable time from administrative activities.

We are launching the tool to you in the belief that it will save your precious time and allow you to focus more on billable hours. Please leave your feedback in the comments section.

Try Cazny Free

↑ Back to Top

In this article, you’ll learn how to sort a list of tuples by the second value in Python.

To make it more fun, we have the following running scenario:

BridgeTech is a bridge restoration company. They have asked you to sort and return the Top 10 elements from the Periodic Table based on the ‘Atomic Radius’ in descending order.

The atomic radius of a chemical element is a measure of the size of its atom, usually the mean or typical distance from the center of the nucleus to the outermost isolated electron.

Wikpedia

Click here to download the Periodic Table. Save this file as periodic_table.csv and move it to the current working directory.

Question: How would you write the Python code to accomplish this task?

We can accomplish this task by one of the following options:

• Method 1: Use sort() and lambda
• Method 2: Use sort() and itemgetter()
• Method 3: Use sorted() and lambda
• Method 4: Use a Bubble Sort

---

Preparation

Before any data manipulation can occur, one (1) new library will require installation.

• The Pandas library enables access to/from a DataFrame.

To install this library, navigate to an IDE terminal. At the command prompt ($), execute the code below. For the terminal used in this example, the command prompt is a dollar sign ($). Your terminal prompt may be different.

$ pip install pandas

Hit the <Enter> key on the keyboard to start the installation process.

If the installation was successful, a message displays in the terminal indicating the same.

---

Feel free to view the PyCharm installation guide for the required library.

• How to install Pandas on PyCharm

---

Add the following code to the top of each code snippet. This snippet will allow the code in this article to run error-free.

import numpy as np

from operator import itemgetter

 Note: The operator library is built-in to Python and does not require installation.

---

Method 1: Use Sort and a Lambda

To sort a list of tuples based on the second element, use sort() and lambda in the one-liner expression tups.sort(key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True).

Here’s an example:

df = pd.read_csv('periodic_table.csv', usecols=['Name', 'AtomicRadius'])

tups = [tuple(x) for x in df.values.tolist()]

tups.sort(key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)

print(tups[0:10])

The CSV file is read in preparation, and two (2) columns save to a DataFrame. The DataFrame then converts to a list of tuples (tups) using List Comprehension.

We are ready to sort!

A lambda is passed as a parameter to sort() indicating the sort element (x[1]), and the sort order is set to descending (reverse=True). The results save to tups.

To complete the process, slicing is performed, and the Top 10 elements are sent to the terminal.

Output

[('Francium', 348.0), ('Cesium', 343.0), ('Rubidium', 303.0), ('Radium', 283.0), ('Potassium', 275.0), ('Barium', 268.0), ('Actinium', 260.0), ('Strontium', 249.0), ('Curium', 245.0), ('Californium', 245.0)]

---

Method 2: Use Sort & Itemgetter

To sort a list of tuples by the second element, use the sort() and itemgetter() functions in the expression tuples.sort(key=itemgetter(1), reverse=True).

Here’s an example:

df = pd.read_csv('periodic_table.csv', usecols=['Name', 'AtomicRadius'])

tups = [tuple(x) for x in df.values.tolist()]

tups.sort(key=itemgetter(1), reverse=True)

print(tups[0:10])

The CSV file is read in preparation, and two (2) columns save to a DataFrame. The DataFrame then converts to a List of Tuples (tups) using List Comprehension.

We are ready to sort!

The sort() function passes a key (itemgetter(n)) where n is the sort element (itemgetter(1)), and the sort order is set to descending (reverse=True).

The results save to tups.

To complete the process, slicing is performed, and the Top 10 elements are sent to the terminal.

 Note: The itemgetter() function is slightly faster than a lambda. Use itemgetter if speed and memory are a factor.

---

Method 3: Use Sorted & Lambda

To sort a list of tuples by the second element, combine the functions sorted() and lambda in the expression sorted(tups, key=lambda x:(x[1]), reverse=True) and assign the resulting sorted list to the original variable tups.

Here’s an example:

df = pd.read_csv('periodic_table.csv', usecols=['Name', 'AtomicRadius'])

tups = [tuple(x) for x in df.values.tolist()]

tups = sorted(tups, key=lambda x:(x[1]), reverse=True)

print(tups[0:10])

The CSV file is read in preparation, and two (2) columns save to a DataFrame. The DataFrame then converts to a List of Tuples (tups) using List Comprehension.

We are ready to sort!

A lambda is passed as a parameter to sorted(), indicating the sort element (x[1]), and the sort order is set to descending (reverse=True). The results save to tups.

To complete the process, slicing is performed, and the Top 10 elements are sent to the terminal.

---

Method 4: Use Bubble Sort

To sort a List of Tuples by the second element, you can also modify a sorting algorithm from scratch such as Bubble Sort to access the second (or n-th) tuple value as a basis for sorting.

Here’s an example:

df = pd.read_csv('periodic_table.csv', usecols=['Name', 'AtomicRadius'])

tups = [tuple(x) for x in df.values.tolist()] def sort_tuples_desc(tups, idx): length = len(tups) for i in range(0, length): for j in range(0, length-i-1): if (tups[j][idx] < tups[j + 1][idx]): tmp = tups[j] tups[j] = tups[j+1] tups[j+1] = tmp return tups

print(sort_tuples_desc(tups, 1)[0:10])

The CSV file is read in preparation, and two (2) columns save to a DataFrame. The DataFrame then converts to a List of Tuples (tups) using List Comprehension.

We are ready to sort!

A sort function sort_tuples_desc is created and passed two (2) parameters: a List of Tuples (tups), and the sort element (idx). Then, the infamous Bubble Sort is performed on the elements.

This function returns a List of Tuples sorted in descending order.

To complete the process, slicing is performed, and the Top 10 elements are sent to the terminal.

---

Summary

These four (4) methods of sorting a List of Tuples based on the second element should give you enough information to select the best one for your coding requirements.

Good Luck & Happy Coding!

---