I followed these instructions to install nltk module on my mac (10.6)
I have installed python 2.7, but when I open IDLE and type import nltk it gives me this error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
import nltk
ImportError: No module named nltk
The problem is the module is installed in another python version, 2.6. How can I install the package in python version 2.7? I tried some of the solutions suggested in various answers, for example I tried typing this in the terminal
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages
and then installed NLTK again with the command
sudo pip install -U nltk
but I get the message: Requirement already up-to-date in /Library/Python/2.6/. So apparently the command line export PYTHONPATH didn't do anything (it still tries to install the package in 2.6) OR (more likely) I didn't understand the meaning/functioning of that command line. What am I doing wrong?
9 Answers
On OS X you could have multiple installation of Python, so investigate it first:
$ which python python2 python3
/usr/bin/python
/usr/local/bin/python3
$ which pip pip2 pip3
/usr/local/bin/pip
/usr/local/bin/pip2
/usr/local/bin/pip3
All within /usr/bin are built-in and all other in /usr/local/bin are external installed by Homebrew or some other package manager.
If you're using pip or pip3 from /usr/local, then you've to use the same Python instance, otherwise they're different instances.
Just install it via pip:
pip install nltk
or for Python 3:
pip3 install nltk
then run the right Python instance from /usr/local/bin or update your PATH system variable.
Make sure you install the actual Python for Mac, not the one built into the console. Then, install pip by executing this script. Then skip to part 3 of the instructions and go from there.
Try this
pip install --user -U nltk
In my case, the following command worked for me. Try this!!
py -3 -m pip install nltk
On my mac I had two different versions of Python 3 installed: Python 3.6 and Python 3.7. I had installed nltk having Python 3.7 in my $PATH:
$ pip3 install nltk
$ which python3
/Library/Frameworks/
$ echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/
But nltk was missing for Python 3.6. Solution: install nltk also for version 3.6.
$ echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/
$ pip3 install nltk
Collecting nltk
Using cached
Requirement already satisfied: six in /Library/Frameworks/ (from nltk) (1.12.0)
Collecting singledispatch (from nltk)
Using cached
Installing collected packages: singledispatch, nltk
Running setup.py install for nltk ... done
Successfully installed nltk-3.4 singledispatch-3.4.0.3
I would use a virtualenv, but if you really want to use it from the terminal, I'd recommend adding your export statement to ~/.bashrc
Just restart Jupyter Notebook or anything you are using after installing... It works...
I had a similar issue an an Intel MacBook.
Fixed with
- Make sure the python bin directory in the path
- mine is
/Users/<user>/Library/Python/3.9/bin
- mine is
- Restart the computer
NOTE that just restarting the terminal did NOT help
VERY chaotic this post. Let´s start by clearing some key points:
- OSX is 10.6 which means Python v2.71 (from Nov 2010)
- here is the installer, just in case: Python v271 1:
- NLTK requires Python versions 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 or 3.11 Check this out: Installing Python 311 on OSX
Hope this helps!
LAO
