Interactive Python IDLE

When using Python from a shell, the REPL is fairly awful and doesn't let you copy-paste or save, except through the shell itself. I especially find that copy-pasting functions in is error-prone. There's a nice interactive environment for Python called IDLE (after Eric ): It's probably an application in your /Applications/Python 3.7 folder, or whatever other OS's do, or can be run with IDLE3 from the shell. Other than using ^N/^P for next/previous history line, it works pretty much exactly as you'd expect a GUI REPL to work, and lets you save your session as a text file, easy to extract some functions from later or use as a doctest.

Trouble is, IDLE doesn't automatically pick up the ~/.pystartup script; I had to remember to call it with IDLE3 -s, and there's no easy way to do that from the desktop, where I'm often lazily clicking. This has been frustrating me very slightly for years.

So: open Automator, new Document, add Utilities/Run Shell Script, and paste in:

IDLE3 -s

Save as an Application, name it IdleStart. The icon's ugly and generic, so I made a half-assed icon, copy it from an image editor or Preview, and paste into the icon in Get Info on the application.

Now I have a nice stupid foot to click on, and get a proper REPL. The running program has a hideous 16x16 or 32x32 icon scaled up, which I don't think I can easily solve; I looked at the idlelib source and while I could patch it, it's not easily configured. Maybe later. There's also no way to specify the window location, which I'd like to have mid-left of my screen, but again, maybe later.

While I'm at it, the themes are garish, and the customizer is unpleasant. So I just edited this in ~/.idlerc/config-highlight.cfg, then picked Mark's Dark theme:

[Mark's Dark] normal-foreground = #eeeeee normal-background = #111111 keyword-foreground = #ff8000 keyword-background = #111111 builtin-foreground = #0099ff builtin-background = #111111 comment-foreground = #dd0000 comment-background = #111111 string-foreground = #80ffdd string-background = #111111 definition-foreground = #80ff80 definition-background = #111111 hilite-foreground = #ffffff hilite-background = #808080 break-foreground = #ffffff break-background = #808000 hit-foreground = #002040 hit-background = #ffffff error-foreground = #ffffff error-background = #cc6666 cursor-foreground = #ffffff stdout-foreground = #ccddff stdout-background = #111111 stderr-foreground = #ffbbbb stderr-background = #111111 console-foreground = #ff4444 console-background = #111111 context-foreground = #ffffff context-background = #444444

My current ~/.pystartup is short (in python2 it was much longer, since nothing worked right), just some common imports and functions I use enough to miss:

import os, sys import math import random as R import re import time import turtle as T def dice(n, s): t = 0 for i in range(n): t += R.randint(1, s) return t def roundup(n): return math.floor(n+0.5) def sign(i): if i > 0: return 1 elif i == 0: return 0 return -1 print("READY")

Now if I click the foot and see "READY" above >>>, it's all working.

#002040 #0099ff #111111 #444444 #808000 #808080 #80ff80 #80ffdd #cc6666 #ccddff #dd0000 #devtools #eeeeee #ff4444 #ff8000 #ffbbbb #ffffff #nerd #Python