Using with an editor or IDE¶

Suppose that you are using an editor or IDE to work on a file called my_program.py and your editor has an option (perhaps from a menu or by clicking a button) to run my_program.py using Python. However, you’d like to run this program with friendly’s help as though it was invoked the usual way:

python -m friendly my_program.py
# or
python -im friendly my_program.py

The simplest way to do this is to create a second file (let’s call it friendly_run.py) located in the same folder as your program:

some_folder/
        |-------- friendly_run.py
        |-------- my_program.py

In its simplest version, friendly_run.py will contain the following two lines of code:

from friendly import run
run("my_program.py")

Instead of executing my_program.py, have your editor or IDE run friendly_run.py instead.

Depending on the editor or IDE that you use, some minor differences may have to be included on the above, as described in the following pages.

The above default is equivalent to executing the following:

python -im friendly my_program.py

which starts a friendly console at the end of the program’s execution. If you want instead the equivalent to:

python -m friendly my_program.py

use the following:

from friendly import run
run("my_program.py", console=False)

Using command line arguments¶

Suppose you wish to run a program that expect command line arguments. For example, you might have written a program that adds some numbers passed as arguments on the command line:

$ python adder.py 1 2.5 3
The sum is 6.5.

Here’s an example, taken from our unit tests:

# Demonstration of a program that uses command line arguments
import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("numbers", nargs="*", help="List of numbers to add.")

total = 0
args = parser.parse_args()

for number in args.numbers:
    total += float(number)

print(f"The sum is {total}.")

Running the program with the following code will result in The sum is 6.5. being printed:

import friendly

friendly.run(
    "tests/adder.py",
    console=False,
    args=("1", "2.5", "3")
)