On 2015-08-23 20:26, Alexander Walters wrote:

On 8/23/2015 15:20, MRAB wrote:

...

Here's an answer on StackOverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1145428/difference-between-inspect-and-in...

That inspired this question. See, that answer talks about the internal states of cpython. It does not answer if the flags actually can be different at any given time (in my experimentation, they cannot), why both are exposed to python users (if they cannot be different, they should be), or if they can be different, in what conditions they would be.

That should be resolved through either getting rid of one (eventually), or documentation.

I tested it, and they _can_ be different. sys.flags.interactive will be true if you include the -i switch. sys.flags.inspect will be true if you include the -i switch or set the PYTHONINSPECT environment variable. Thus, if you don't include the -i switch but _do_ set PYTHONINSPECT, sys.flags.interactive will be false and sys.flags.inspect will be true.