Interactive Terminal

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• What does the terminal/console do for me?

Objectives

• To understand the usefulness of the interactive terminal

• To discern between the functionality of the editor and the interactive terminal

The Interactive Terminal (in Spyder, the IPython Console) allows you to execute commands and interact with data inside any number of IPython interpreters.

Each console in Spyder is executed in a separate process, allowing you to run scripts independently.

A terminal/console/shell is an implementation of a read–eval–print loop (REPL), that is, input and executes commands, and returns the result to the user.

IPython Console features include:

• Introspection,
• Display rich media,
• Understand shell syntax,
• Perform tab (code) completion,
• and records History.

Expected Benefits

• Immediate response to our ideas.
• Quick exploration of the available functionalities.
• Keep a record of our attempts.
• Work in isolated processes.

Let’s Write a first version of Bingo Cards printer

We will use the print function and the for structure to print the BINGO card in a nicer format.

Things to pay attention to:

• Syntax coloring in the console
• Code completion in the console
• Integrated help in the console
• Each console is a separated process.

String format

https://pyformat.info/ is a nice resource to look for an overview and examples of python string formatting.

Key Points

• The interactive terminal is a special feature of dynamic or interpreted languages

• The interactive terminal allows us to play and test ideas before writing -definitive- code in the editor