run python file using terminal

To run and view the output of a Python file from the terminal, you can follow these steps:

**Step 1: Open the Terminal**

* On a Mac, you can find the Terminal app in the Applications/Utilities folder, or use Spotlight to search for it.

* On a Windows PC, you can search for "Terminal" in the Start menu or type "cmd" in the Run dialog box (Windows key + R).

* On a Linux machine, you can find the Terminal app by searching for it in the application menu or by typing "gnome-terminal" in the command line.

**Step 2: Navigate to the folder containing your Python file**

* Use the `cd` command to change the directory to the folder where your Python file is located. For example:

```

cd ~/Desktop

```

This will change the directory to your Desktop folder.

**Step 3: Run the Python file**

* Use the following command to run your Python file:

```

python main.py

```

This will execute the code in your `main.py` file.

**Step 4: View the output**

* The output of your Python file will be displayed in the Terminal window. You can scroll up and down to view the output.

**Tips and Variations:**

* If your Python file has a different name or is located in a different directory, simply modify the command accordingly.

* If you want to specify a specific Python interpreter to use, you can do so by adding the path to the interpreter before running your script. For example:

```

/path/to/python main.py

```

* If you want to run your script in debug mode, you can use the following command:

```

python -m pdb main.py

```

This will allow you to step through your code line by line and set breakpoints.

**Example Output:**

Here's an example of what the output might look like if you have a simple Python file called `main.py` that contains the following code:

```python

print("Hello, World!")

x = 5

print(x)

```

When you run `python main.py` in the Terminal, you should see the following output:

```

Hello, World!

5

```

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.

Apple has not bundled any release of Python in macOS since Monterey 12.3. Although there is a much older distribution of Python3 (3.9.6) in Xcode or the CommandLine Tools for Xcode, I prefer to stay current with the Python3 (3.12.3) distribution from Python.org.

In the Terminal, and after you have resolved your PATH statement to see the Python3 build, you can launch a Python3 script via the following. The # are comments:

# Python3 script with or without the #!/usr/bin/env python3 preamble in it

python3 myscript.py

# Python3 script with that preceding preamble

myscript.py

# Python3 script with a file argument

python3 myscript.py ~/Desktop/kant.docx

# or

myscript.py ~/Desktop/kant.docx

and the working contents of myscript.py that takes a Word .docx document on the command line and returns a list of fonts in it:

Source:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import zipfile
import re
import os
import sys


def main():

    fonts = []
    try:
        thefile = os.path.expanduser(sys.argv[1])
    except (ValueError, IndexError):
        sys.exit('Usage: {} filename.docx\n'.format(sys.argv[0]))

    if not thefile.endswith('.docx'):
        sys.exit('Not a valid Word document')

    # Word docx compressed-zip, single file format
    if zipfile.is_zipfile(thefile):
        with zipfile.ZipFile(thefile, 'r') as pzip:
            xmldata = pzip.read('word/fontTable.xml').decode('utf-8')
            fonts = re.findall(r'(?<=w:name=)("[ \w+]+")>', xmldata)

    if not fonts:
        sys.exit("Unlikely, but there were no fonts found.")

    # sets remove duplicates
    for name in sorted(set(fonts)):
        print("{}".format(name.strip('\"')))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main())

Tested with Python 3.12.3 on macOS Sonoma 14.5