I am used to Java and IDEs like Netbeans which appear to make it very straightforward to change names by highlighting everywhere where the name needs to change.
What is the best way to go about this in Python?
I am assuming the answer will have something to do with writing tests (of what form and how should I organise them?) and text search and replace (what to do about same name referencing different variables).
INFO: I’m using emacs on windows.
And after a bit of googling I found http://rope.sourceforge.net/, a refactoring library for python with extensions for vim and emacs. From what I can tell it’s pretty solid. You can also check out http://bicyclerepair.sourceforge.net/ for another option.