Just Getting Started with Python on MS XP Pro

[rzed]

DouhetSukd at gmail.com wrote in
news:1168064599.558820.9410 at 42g2000cwt.googlegroups.com: 

> Wise choice + welcome to the club.

Seconded.

> The only real XP drawback is that Python is not bundled on
> Windows, while it is included with OS X and most (all?) Linux
> distros. 
> 

My computer does, in fact, include a Python 2.2.1 installation, 
which the manufacturer uses internally.

> 2.  use any ol' text editor that _you_ are familiar with, save
> to file, and python <file> under DOS.  later on you can always
> pick an editor. i prefer eclipse + pydev, yes, even on windows.
> 
> personally, i find pythonwin _great_ to test out code
> interactively, mediocre to write lots of code with and
> occasionally handy to debug code in.
> 
> if you hate typing python <file> under DOS, then I guess you
> will have to run programs from pythonwin.
> 

Not so, but it takes a little setup. If I want to run a Python 
program named, say, "fixthis.py", I can invoke it by typing 
"fixthis.py" at the command-line prompt (if I'm running cmd.exe), 
or by clicking the icon in Windows Explorer. To make the command-
line option work, I have to have file associations set so that .py 
files open with python (and .pyw files open with pythonw, for that 
matter). I *think* this is done at install time, though I may have 
done that separately.

There is also an environment variable called "pathext", which is 
just a list of extensions the system recognizes as being 
executable in some way. if you add .py and .pyw to that list, then 
all you have to type at the command line is "fixthis" to get that 
Python program to run.

I note that I have had my Python root and Python/Scripts directory 
on my path at times. There may be some packages that require these 
things, but what I talked about in the previous two paragraphs 
doesn't require pythonpath to be set specially.

(Fiddling around) Ah! If you want to invoke the interactive python 
shell, you will probably want to add the root location to your 
path, so you can type
> python
... to invoke it, rather than
> c:\python25\python
... and something similar may be true for the Scripts 
subdirectory.

-- 
rzed