Interactive startup file

[William Park]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2001 at 07:22:15PM -0500, Brendhan Horne wrote:
> In the tutorial it  says in section 2.2.3
...
> import os
> filename = os.environ.get('PYTHONSTARTUP')
> if filename and os.path.isfile(filename):
>     execfile(filename)
...
> Can some one please explain this to me in novice english and for a guy
> who is using windows98 with his python.

Well, it's exactly what it says.

If you set environment variable
    PYTHONSTARTUP='.pythonrc'
then commands in file '.pythonrc' will be executed everytime you run
python in interactive mode (ie. when you get '>>>' prompt).  For
example, mine contains
    import rlcompleter
    rlcompleter.readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')

If you want to run those commands from a script, then you have to call
the file explicitly, using
    execfile('.pythonrc')

:wq --William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, Linux/Python, 8 CPUs.