I just want to be able to run a python script from the interpreter, so that I can work on my changes to my script in notepad or other editor, save, and then interactively test changed code in the python interpreter.
Also, IDLE is not a solution. I'm operating on a government computer that is blocking the port it uses to communicate interaction between console and module.
To clear up any confusion, here's a demonstration of what I'm trying to do:
So, how do I do it?
EDIT:
Okay so I found a statement that does what I want. exec(open('dir').read())
. The problem I think is that the directory I want to refer to contains periods. But I'm sure this will work, because open('dir').read()
produces a string of the contents of a document specified, as long as I reference the likes of C:\myTest.py
, and exec()
obviously runs strings as input. So how can I reference files from the location I want?
Okay so the problem seems to be that Windows addresses often contain what python sees as 'unicode exits'. I'm not sure what they do or how they work, but I know they start with \
and are followed by a single letter and that there are enough of them to use up half the alphabet. There are a few solutions but only one is worth a damn for this application. I came across an operator that can be used in conjunction with strings, similarly to how +
can be used to concatenate multiple strings, it seems r
or R
if you prefer (interestingly), can be used immediately before a string to tell the interpreter to take the string 'literally' as a string, and nothing else.
One would think that the quotes would be enough to express this, but they aren't and I'll probably eventually find out why. But for now, here's the answer to my question. I hope someone else finds it useful:
In plain text: >>> exec(open(R'C:\Users\First.Last\Desktop\myScript.py').read())