Making the python command run python3 in Linux

Especially helpful on AWS EC2 instances where old versions of python still exist or the python command doesn’t work at all

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I have a bunch of pentesting tools and security scanners written over time and some of them depend on “python” being available. Some depend on “python3.” Some of them depending “python” calling “python3.” It’s a mess.

Then there’s AWS where Amazon Linux 2 still uses python 2.7 or something under the hood likely due to precedence issues that create security problems in. Python 3. I’m not sure.

Potential Bugs and Security Problems Due to Change in Module Precedence from Python 2 to Python 3

In any case, if you need “python” to run “python3” for your use case, you can use this simple trick.

Edit your ~/.bash_profile file.