examining an initial, pristine python3 shell session

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Alf P. Steinbach wrote:

> * Robert P. J. Day:

   ... snip ...

> >   what other useful commands might i run immediately after
> > starting a session whose output would be informative?  i can
> > certainly poke at some of those objects to see them in more
> > detail.  i'm just curious what others might recommend.  thanks.
>
> That depends on what you mean by "newbie".
>
> If it's someone who knows a little bit of programming but is new to
> Python, then 'help' would definitely be about the first thing I'd
> show her.
>
> But if it's someone who doesn't even know anything about
> programming, then I'd recommend (blatant plug) <url:
> http://tinyurl.com/programmingbookP3> -- its first two chapters are
> constructed around complete, concrete examples. However, you would
> have to adapt just the *sense* of the first chapter, which is only
> about tool usage, to *nix, since it's written for Windows. I'd not
> dive into 'help' for the someone who doesn't know anything because
> it gets technical pretty fast, and because she will get back to that
> on her own when it's time.
>
> Whatever you do, and whatever the background of the newbie, do
> introduce turtle graphics right away.

  ah, thank you, i appreciate that reference.  i'm expecting the small
audience to be relatively tech-savvy with OO dev experience, and i'm
betting that some of them will be wondering right off the very first
thing *i* was wondering -- when i start that python3 shell and get
dumped into it, what am i looking at?  which is why i wanted to
collect a few commands to give the attendees at least a vague idea of
what was already there.

  i've collected the following to start with:

>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__']
>>> globals()
... stuff ...

then move on to examine *those* things:

>>> type(dir)
<class 'builtin_function_or_method'>
>>> type(globals)
<class 'builtin_function_or_method'>
>>> type(__builtins__)
<class 'module'>

zoom in a bit further and pick on specific examples:

>>> dir(__builtins__)
... lots of output ...

and so on.  as i said, i know it looks dry but i figure i can take 5
minutes or so just to lay out the terrain and what a shell session
looks like before you do *anything* with it.  and i'm betting most of
my audience will appreciate getting that high-level view before
launching into some programming.  they'll just want to know the
initial session setup before they start importing stuff into it.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

            Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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