1.9. The Idle Editor and Execution

1.9.1. Loading a Program in the Idle Editor, and Running It

It is time to put longer collections of instructions together. That is most easily done by creating a text file and running the Python interpreter on the file. Idle simplifies that process.

First you can put an existing file into an Idle Edit Window. Start with the sample program madlib.py. If you have not downloaded it yet, see Your Python Folder and Python Examples.

Assuming you are already in Idle from the previous sections, you can open a file from there:

  • Click on the Idle File menu and select Open. (Or as you see, you can use the shortcut Ctrl-O. That means holding down the Ctrl key, and pressing the letter O for Open.) You should get a file selection dialog.

  • You need to navigate to the folder with the file you want. If you already had a file open, and its window has the foreground focus when you make access the File menu, then the folder that opens is the same as the folder from which the current file came.

    If the Shell Window has the foreground focus, then the folder opened depends on the operating system:

    • Windows: At least through Python 3.7, Windows is likely to open a buried system folder that you do not want to mess with! Switch to your Desktop or Documents, and find the right folder from there. Hopefully the behaviour will be more like on a Mac in future version.
    • Mac and Linux: A reasonable folder opens: Documents. Navigate from there.

    Hence it is important to set the focus on an Edit window to have the same folder appear when opening a new file.

  • Select the file you want. (The initial suggestion was madlib.py.)

You will see the source code again. Now run this program from inside of Idle: Go to the Run menu of that Edit window, and select Run Module. Notice the shortcut (F5) also available.

If the Shell window does not automatically come to the foreground, select it. You should see a line saying RESTART and then the start of the execution of the Mad Lib program with the cursor waiting for your entry after the first prompt. Finish executing the program. Be sure to type the final requested Enter, so you get back to the interpreter prompt: >>>

Look at the editor window again. You should see that different parts of the code have different colors. String literals are likely green. The reserved word def is likely orange. Look at the last two lines, where the identifier tellStory is black, and the identifier input is likely purple. Only identifiers that are not predefined by Python are black. If you create an identifier name, make sure Idle shows it in black.

1.9.2. Starting Idle for Editing

You are strongly suggested to keep the programs you write in the given examples folder along with all the examples provided to you. You can always easily see the files you created, all together, by sorting by creation date. You are likely to create new programs derived from some of the given examples, and some earlier programs of your own. Everything is easy to access if you keep them together.

The way I recommended to start Idle to work on this tutorial is to start by opening it on a file in the folder where you want to work, either a file you want to further edit, a related file you want to modify, or just any Python file in the same folder if you want to start from scratch.

To open Idle with an initial file to edit, select the Python file in an operating system window, right click (Windows) or control-click (Mac), to get a pop-up window to select how to open the file. On Windows, the line for Idle requires you to open a sub-menu. Select Idle for the latest version.

Opening Idle without a file reference, directly from the operating system, makes the associated folder for opening and saving files be the same wrong one as described in the previous section from inside Idle, when the Shell Window has foreground focus.

Alternate approaches to starting Idle are discussed in the operating specific appendix sections.

1.9.3. The Classic First Program

Have Idle started as in the previous section, so some Python file has the foreground focus.

Open a new window by going to the File menu and selecting New File. This gives you a rather conventional text editing window with the mouse available, ability to cut and paste, plus a few special options for Python.

Type (or paste) the following into the editor window (not the Shell Window):

print('Hello world!')

Save the file with the menu sequence File ‣ Save, and then enter the file name hello.py. Python program files should always be given a name ending in ”.py”. If you give no extension, ”.py” is assumed. You can also enter it explicitly.

There are also the options File ‣ Save As and File ‣ Save Copy As. Both save a copy to a different name, but only File ‣ Save As changes the name of the file you are editing in Idle.

Warning

It is the contents of the foreground Idle window that get saved. You are unlikely to mean to save the contents of the Shell window, but it is easy for that window to have the focus when you mean to save a program in an edit window.

Syntax coloring: If you look in the editor, you should see that your text is color coded. The editor will color different parts of Python syntax in special colors.

Now that you have a complete, saved program, choose Run ‣ Run Module. You should see the program run in the Python Shell window.

You just wrote and executed a program. Unlike when you use the shell, this code is saved to a file in your Python folder. You can open and execute the file any time you want. (In Idle, use File ‣ Open.)

To the interpreter, a program source file is a Python module. We will tend to use the more general term: a program file is a module. Note the term from the menu when running the program.

Distinguish program code from Shell text: It is easy to confuse the Shell and the Edit windows. Make sure you keep them straight. The hello.py program is just the line

print('Hello world!')

that you typed into the edit window and saved. When you ran the program in Idle, you saw results in the Shell. First came the Restart notice, the one-line output from the program saying hello, and a further Shell prompt:

>>> ================================ RESTART ========
>>>
Hello world!
>>>

You could also have typed this single printing line directly in the Shell in response to a Shell prompt. When you see >>>, you could enter the print function and get the exchange between you and the Shell:

>>> print('Hello world')
Hello world!
>>>

Warning

The three lines above are not a program you could save in a file and run. This is just an exchange in the Shell, with its >>> prompts, individual line to execute, and the response.

Again, just the single line, with no >>>,

print('Hello world!')

entered into the Edit window forms a program you can save and run. The >>> prompts have no place in a Python program file.

We will shortly get to more interesting many-statement programs, where it is much more convenient to use the Edit window than the Shell!

The general assumption in this Tutorial will be that programs are run in Idle and the Idle Shell is the Shell referred to. It will be explicitly stated when you should run a program directly from the operating system.

In general it is also fine to run our programs from a cmd console (Windows) or terminal (Mac) or from a different development environment.

Warning

Running the text based example programs in Windows, like birthday2.py, by selecting them to run from a file folder, will not work well: The program ends and the window automatically closes before you can see the final output.

On a Mac you get to explicitly close the verbose terminal window created when you run a Python program from the Finder.

1.9.4. Program Documentation String

The hello program above is self evident, and shows how short and direct a program can be (unlike other languages such as Java). Still, right away, get used to documenting a program. Python has a special feature: If the beginning of a program is just a quoted string, that string is taken to be the program’s documentation string. Open the example file hello2.py in the Edit window:

'''A very simple program,
showing how short a Python program can be!
Authors: ___, ___
'''

print('Hello world!')  #This is a stupid comment after the # mark

Most commonly, the initial documentation goes on for several lines, so a multi-line string delimiter is used (the triple quotes). Just for completeness of illustration in this program, another form of comment is also shown, a comment that starts with the symbol # and extends to the end of the line. The Python interpreter completely ignores this form of comment. Such a comment should only be included for better human understanding. Avoid making comments that do not really aid human understanding. (Do what I say, not what I did above.) Good introductory comment strings and appropriate names for the parts of your programs make fewer # symbol comments needed!

Run the program and see the documentation and comment make no difference in the result.

1.9.5. Screen Layout

Of course you can arrange the windows on your computer screen any way that you like. A suggestion is to display the combination of the editor to write, the shell to run, and the tutorial to follow along.

There is an alternative to maximization for the Idle editor window: It you want it to go top to bottom of the screen but not widen, you can toggle that state with Options -> Zoom Height or the keyboard shortcut shown beside it.