Spawning an interactive interpreter in a running python process?

[Tim Chase]

>     I'm curious, in an academic sense, if it's possible to spawn the
> interactive interpreter (>>>) in a running python application. Ideally, I
> would like to be able to access the modules, functions and variables the
> application can.
> 
> Is something like this possible?

While not exactly "the interactive interpreter", you can use pdb 
to drop to a debugging prompt where you can "access the modules, 
functions and variables the application can".  The common idiom 
is to insert a line like

   import pdb; pdb.set_trace()

in your code to have a break-point stop execution at the 
designated point and leave you at a prompt where you can explore.

-tkc