This will stop any program or statement that’s running in the shell at the time of interruption.

You can also interrupt the execution of the shell from this menu. The shell has forgotten about everything that came before it was restarted. This is an error message that says the variable x is not defined. However, when you restart the shell and try to call print(x) again, you can see that the shell prints a traceback. When you call print(x), the shell shows the correct output, which is the number 5. In the image above, you first declare a variable, x = 5.

The shell will forget about everything from its previous state: It will act as though you’ve started a fresh instance of Python IDLE. If you select that option, then you’ll clear the state of the shell. You can restart the shell from this menu. You’ll see a few options for using the shell: You type in commands one at a time and Python responds with the result of each command. This is the most basic way to interact with Python IDLE. Here, you used print() to output the string 'Hello, from IDLE!' to your screen. You can test it out with a short line of code: You can use it to start interacting with Python immediately. This is a blank Python interpreter window. When you click on the icon to open the program, the shell is the first thing that you see: The shell is the default mode of operation for Python IDLE. If you’re just beginning your Python programming journey, then Python IDLE is a great alternative! How to Use the Python IDLE Shell

Professional IDEs are more robust pieces of software and they have a steep learning curve. Python IDLE also provides several useful features that you’ll see in professional IDEs, like basic syntax highlighting, code completion, and auto-indentation. Python IDLE gives you the ability to create and edit these files with ease. py extension that contain lines of Python code. A File EditorĮvery programmer needs to be able to edit and save text files. You can simplify your workflow with Python IDLE, which will immediately start a Python shell when you open it. You can access it through the terminal or command line app on your machine. The Python shell is an excellent place to experiment with small code snippets. Note: For a full guide to the standard Python REPL, check out The Python Standard REPL: Try Out Code and Ideas Quickly.

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