What gives you that idea? In fact it's documented early on in the
tutorial, in the man page, and in the relevant section of the library
manual! Try
sys.path.append('/etc')
or even
sys.path = ['/usr/local/lib/python', '/etc']
--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <mailto:Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl>
<http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Guido.van.Rossum.html>