Installing python 3.8.2

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Installing python 3.8.2

I am interested in working with python on my Mac running 10.15.3. When I run python --version in Terminal, it spits back 2.7.16. I would like to use the latest stable version out there which seems to be 3.8.2. I used an installer from https://www.python.org/downloads/ to download it. However, after installing it, terminal is still spitting out 2.7.16 as the version.

Where is python 3.8 installed and how do I get the path for python to point there? I am a little rusty on the command line.

Posted on Mar 19, 2020 7:28 PM

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Answer 1

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mahongue Author

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3,537 points

Mar 19, 2020 7:55 PM in response to etresoft

Dear entresoft,

Thank you for your answer. I actually figured it out myself. The answer was quite easy. The python command runs python 2.7.16 that came installed and the python3 command runs the latest version I downloaded (3.8.2). All I needed to know is to tag on the 3 to the end of the command. It also applies to pip where pip3 is what you use to get the extra modules.

I used...

python3 -m ensurepip --upgrade

pip3 install -U requests

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Answer 2

etresoft

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51,022 points

Mar 19, 2020 7:49 PM in response to mahongue

There is no easy answer here. You are going to have to get un-rusty. macOS 10.15.3 ships with two different versions of Python. But neither one is usable for end users or even meant to be used by end users. Apple’s official stance with regards to scripting languages is that users need to install their own.

While you can use the built in Python to run simple scripts, virtually any real python code requiring 3rd party modules will not work. You have to install your own Python and, more importantly, learn how the Python environment works and how to live with multiple versions of Python installed. For most Python programmers, that is normal. They typically need a new version of Python for practically every program. But how you are going to do any of that on a Mac is a question for Python developers. If they choose to support the Mac, they need to tell you how to run it.

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Answer 3

Mar 20, 2020 3:12 AM in response to mahongue

+1. Beware that if you were to install Xcode 11.n, or the corresponding command-line tools for Xcode, it would rudely install python3 (3.7) into /usr/bin, and that may PATH compete with your using python3 from python.org. Apple's developer installation of Python3 lacks idle3, pip3, and who knows what else.

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Installing python 3.8.2

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