[Tutor] Interactive programming.

[A.T.Hofkamp]

Kent Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 5:28 AM, A.T.Hofkamp <a.t.hofkamp at tue.nl> wrote:
>> WM. wrote:
>>> Norman Khine wrote:
>>>>  >>> i = 5
>>>>  >>> j = 7
>>>>  >>> if i <= j:
>>>> ...     print 'nudge', 'nudge'
>>>> ... else:
>>>> ...     print 'whatever'
>>>> ...
>>>> nudge nudge
>>>>  >>>
>>> Yes, I understand how your program works.  What I do not understand is how
>>> you got it.  My program came out in IDLE as you see it.  No ..., different
>>> indentation, an error message before I could add the else alternative.
>>>  (Which, as a Pythonista, one should know, is "Wink-wink".)
>> In IDLE in the window with the ">>>" prompt:
>>
>> After the colon at the 'if' line, you press ENTER (ie you tell Python 'the
>> line has ended here').
>> The interpreter then supplies the "..." to denote that you are entering a
>> multi-line statement.
> 
> No, IDLE does not supply the ..., that is the source of the confusion.
> 
> If you use the interpreter directly from a command/terminal window it
> will supply the ... continuation prompt but the IDLE shell will not.

Thank you Kent, I didn't know that.

The story stays the same, except that you don't get the "... " from Python.
That means that the second line and further are all shifted 4 positions to the 
left, so you'd need to enter something like:

 >>> i = 5
 >>> j = 7
 >>> if i <= j:
      print 'nudge', 'nudge'
else:
      print 'whatever'


I agree that this is highly confusing.


The best solution is probably to use the editor window instead, and save/run 
your programs from there.

Sincerely,
Albert