Help! Can't get program to run.

[Ned Deily]

In article <7618rjF1a3t8jU1 at mid.uni-berlin.de>,
 "Diez B. Roggisch" <deets at nospam.web.de> wrote:
> seanm.py at gmail.com schrieb:
> > I think this is maybe the most basic problem possible, but I can't get
> > even the most basic Python to run on OS X using Terminal or IDLE. I
> > used the IDLE editor to create a file with one line of code
> > 
> > print 'text string'
> > 
> > and I saved the file as module1.py. When using terminal I entered
> > "python" to load the interpreter or whatever and then tried
> > 
> > python module1.py
> > 
> > but I got an error message. I've tried using the file path instead of
> > module1.py and that didn't work either. I've tried moving the file to
> > different places, my desktop, hard drive, etc., and none of that
> > worked either. In IDLE I tried similar things and only got error
> > messages there too.
> > 
> > Needless to say this is a frustrating start to learning this langauge.
> > I'd really appreciate any help getting this to work, so I can move on
> > the actual language. Thanks so much.
> 
> It would have helped if you had given us the *actual* error-message.
>  From what little information you give, it appears as if you do 
> something very basic wrong - instead of doing
> $ python
>  >>> python mymodule.py 
> (where $ is the shell/terminal and >>> the python-prompt)
> you either do
> $ python
>  >>> print "hello"
> or
> $ python mymodule.py 
> to execute mymodule directly.

And from within OS X IDLE itself, if you create or open the file 
mymodule.py, it will be in a separate window and, as long as that window 
is selected, you can run the file directly within IDLE by selecting "Run 
Module" from the "Run" menu.   So, no need to use the Terminal if you 
don't want to.

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org