Python Interpreter question.

[Roy Smith]

In article <1gjrd1h.4w2qi610yei4wN%aleaxit at yahoo.com>,
 aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) wrote:

> Similarly for anything you type at the interactive >>> prompt -- the
> fact that whatever source you type gets compiled into bytecode first,
> and then that bytecode is handed over to the VM for execution,  is no
> problem to you... in practice you DO have an interpreter, even though
> "deep down" it's just a compiler + a VM!-)

And this is one of the coolest features of python.  Being able to just 
type stuff at an interactive prompt instead of having to create a file, 
compile it, and run it, makes it so easy to explore bits of the system 
you're not sure of.  For example, if I want to find out what methods 
lists have, I can just type

dir ([])

which is a lot faster than looking it up in the docs.