Question

I’m fairly new to programming but I was wondering what ‘executable form’ meant & how to convert a Python file into an executable form.

Answer 1

I’d guess that whoever wrote that meant to set the executable bit on the file. To do that on most UNIX platforms, you’ll need to go into some kind of shell and run this:

chmod +x /full/path/to/file.py

(note that the full path is not actually required — you can use a relative path, too)

If you’ve done that and the file starts with an appropriate hashbang like:

#!/usr/bin/env python

Then you should be able to run the script very easily:

./file.py

(assuming your working directory is the same as the directory in which file.py is located)