ISSUE:

On Windows, a Python 3 install directory contains python.exe. However, there is no python3.exe, python3.cmd or similar. Thus, a user following almost any online tutorial, copy/pasting installation scripts, etc. will fail because all are written for *nix platforms that standardize on python3 as the name of the executable.

Worse, there is a python3.exe in a default AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps directory which is a stub to open the Windows Store to download Python 3. So the unsuspecting user is greeted with the option to install Python 3 from the Windows Store, which could break an existing installation and certainly will not do what they intended.

This is obviously only an issue for novice users. But I teach novice users. And this comes up numerous times each semester despite posting FAQ's and warnings related to this issue. And it seems very easy to fix in the default install.

This seems like it should be an issue long since reported, but I cannot find it by searching. So I apologize if this is a duplicate.

REQUESTED FIX:

One option is simply to add a copy of python.exe named python3.exe in the base install directory. This appears to be how PIP is handled, with pip.exe, pip3.exe and pip3.X.exe all being copies of the same executable located in a Scripts subdirectory.

Alternatively, adding a python3.cmd script that calls python.exe and forwards all args would serve the same function. Though I'm unsure that saving 100MB would be worth the potential confusion.