Question

I have a simple python script (say, simple.py) , like

a = 5
b = a + a
print(b)

But I want the following: output the result as if these commands were executed in the interpreter, like

>>> a = 5
>>> b = a + a
>>> print(b)
10

And I want this in stdout 🙂
Is that possible in some simple way?
Also the same question for IPython.
This question can be helpful for writing a small “how-to” for working with Python/IPython interpreters

Answer 1

You can use the exec statement to execute a line of code (the following is Python 2 code, change the print statements to print() if you want it to be Python 3):

import sys

def run(filename):
    with open(filename) as f:
        for line in f:
            print ">>> ", line
            exec line

if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        run(sys.argv[1])
    except KeyError:
        print "You should pass one filename as parameter."

I should note that it does not appear to handle multi-line statements very well yet (as it’s evaluating each line separately).