Interactive Shell?

[Tim Roberts]

tuglyraisin at aol.commcast (Andrew Burton) wrote:
>
>Which is the best was to use Python: from the interactive shell, as a scripting
>language, or as the Python.h library with C? Is the interactive shell there for
>anything beyond prototyping code?

Call me bizarre, but I use the interactive shell as a very powerful desk
calculator, and I often use it on Windows for file and directory
management.  It's easy to convert a file from Unicode to UTF-8 with just a
few lines of code.  One line, if I'm feeling studly.

There's yet a fourth usage model, if you will: using Pythonwin or IDLE.
Here, you have the benefit of an interactive prompt PLUS a syntax-based
editor.  I find it very productive to edit a file in Pythonwin while trying
out mini-test cases or exploring standard library routines in the built-in
shell.
-- 
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.