Getting started with IDLE and Python - no highlighting and no execution

[MRAB]

On 06/08/2012 01:09, Rotwang wrote:
> On 06/08/2012 00:46, PeterSo wrote:
>> I am just starting to learn Python, and I like to use the editor
>> instead of the interactive shell. So I wrote the following little
>> program in IDLE
>>
>> # calculating the mean
>>
>> data1=[49, 66, 24, 98, 37, 64, 98, 27, 56, 93, 68, 78, 22, 25, 11]
>>
>> def mean(data):
>> 	return sum(data)/len(data)
>>
>> mean(data1)
>>
>>
>> There is no syntax highlighting and when I ran it F5, I got the
>> following in the shell window.
>>
>>
>>   >>> ================================ RESTART
>> ================================
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> I don't know what editor you're using or how it works, but I'm guessing
> that pressing f5 runs what you've written as a script, right? In that
> case the interpreter doesn't automatically print the result of
> expressions in the same way that the interactive interpreter does; you
> didn't tell it to print anything, so it didn't.
>
It looks like it's IDLE.
>
>> If I added print mean(data1), it gave me a invalid syntax
>>
Which suggests to me that it's Python 3.

>> # calculating the mean
>>
>> data1=[49, 66, 24, 98, 37, 64, 98, 27, 56, 93, 68, 78, 22, 25, 11]
>> data2=[1,2,3,4,5]
>>
>> def mean(data):
>> 	return sum(data)/len(data)
>>
>> mean(data1)
>> print mean(data1)
>
> If you're using Python 3.x, you'll need to replace
>
> print mean(data1)
>
> with
>
> print(mean(data1))
>
> since the print statement has been replaced with the print function in
> Python 3.
>
> If you're instead using Python 2.x then I don't know what the problem
> is, but in that case your mean() function won't work properly - the
> forward slash operator between a pair of ints gives you floor division
> by default, so you should instead have it return something like
> float(sum(data))/len(data).
>