I have a demo file: test.py.
In the Windows Console I can run the file with: C:\>test.py
How can I execute the file in the Python Shell instead?
6 Answers
Use execfile for Python 2:
>>> execfile('C:\\test.py')
Use exec for Python 3
>>> exec(open("C:\\test.py").read())
7 Comments
daniel__
in the version 3 (my version) the equivalent is: exec(open("C:\\test.py").read()). thanks!
Musixauce3000
@loops I'm getting:
SyntaxError: (Unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \uXXXX excape. What does this mean? I tried changing the encoding of my .py document to Unicode but that didn't have any effect.Musixauce3000
@loops --Okay I just learned about
\U unicode escapes. Apparetly you avoid his miscommunication by duplicating all backslashes followed by U's. But this produces an OSError 22 invalid argument 'c:\\users\username\\desktop\\test.py' which is weird because I only duplicated the backslash in \Users. Why does the error show that I duplicated all the backslashes except for the one followed by username?
phihag
@Musixauce3000 Please post a new question.
Subhashi
add an 'r' at the beginning if you get the SyntaxError: (Unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec... Therefore it will be, exec(open(r"C:\\test.py").read()).
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If you're wanting to run the script and end at a prompt (so you can inspect variables, etc), then use:
python -i test.py
That will run the script and then drop you into a Python interpreter.
2 Comments
Dimitri Kopriwa
How about if my script is not in a file?
ahron
@DimitriKopriwa do you mean if it is coming in through a buffer or over the network?
It depends on what is in test.py. The following is an appropriate structure:
# suppose this is your 'test.py' file
def main():
"""This function runs the core of your program"""
print("running main")
if __name__ == "__main__":
# if you call this script from the command line (the shell) it will
# run the 'main' function
main()
If you keep this structure, you can run it like this in the command line (assume that $ is your command-line prompt):
$ python test.py
$ # it will print "running main"
If you want to run it from the Python shell, then you simply do the following:
>>> import test
>>> test.main() # this calls the main part of your program
There is no necessity to use the subprocess module if you are already using Python. Instead, try to structure your Python files in such a way that they can be run both from the command line and the Python interpreter.
Comments
For newer version of python:
exec(open(filename).read())
Comments
If you want to avoid writing all of this everytime, you can define a function :
def run(filename):
exec(open(filename).read())
and then call it
run('filename.py')
1 Comment
wjandrea
This doesn't work for my use case since it doesn't import the variables. I'm not quite sure why not though.
From the same folder, you can do:
import test
pythonfrom the command line? Or are you using IDLE or some other program which can also provide a Python>>>prompt?