Editors¶

Interactive Shell¶

With the interactive shell you can easily run most of the examples in this tutorial. Later, you will also learn how to easily include code written to a file as a module.

Linux

Type python3 in the terminal:

$ python3
Python 3.13.0 (main, Oct  7 2024, 05:02:14) on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

macOS

Open a terminal window and enter python3:

$ python3
Python 3.13.0 (main, Oct  7 2024, 05:02:14) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.1.0.2.5)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Note

If you get the error message Command not found, you can run Update Shell Profile, which can be found in Applications/Python3.10.

Windows

You can start the interactive Python shell in Start ‣ Applications ‣ Python 3.13.

Alternatively, you can search for the directly executable file Python.exe, for example in C:\Users\VEIT\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310-64 and then double-click.

You can scroll through previous entries with the arrow keys Home, End, Page up and Page down and repeat with the Enter key.

Exiting the interactive shell¶

To exit the interactive shell, simply use Ctrl-d on Linux and macOS or Ctrl-z on Windows. Alternatively, you can type exit().

IDLE¶

IDLE is the acronym for Integrated Development and Learning Environment and combines an interactive interpreter with tools for code editing and debugging. It is very easy to run on the various platforms:

Linux/macOS

Enter the following into your terminal:

$ idle-python3.13

Windows

You can start IDLE in Windows ‣ All Apps ‣ IDLE (Python GUI)

You can scroll through the history of previous commands with the alt-p and alt-n keys.