1.3 Interactive Mode

If you are on Windows, go into PythonWin.

If you are in Unix run IDLE.pyw.

You should see a window that has some text like this:

PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Apr 18 2001, 14:10:26) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32.
Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH@ActiveState.com) -
see 'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
>>>
The >>> is Python way of telling you that you are in interactive mode. In interactive mode what you type is immediately run. Try typing 1+1 Python will respond with 2. Interactive mode allows you to test out and see what Python will do. If you ever feel you need to play with new Python statements go into interactive mode and try them out.