Question

I’m not sure if function is the word I am looking for. In fact I don’t really know what I’m saying but I have some code and it’s not quite doing it what I want to. Basically I want to copy and paste this code I’ve got and email it to someone. I want them to be able to simply copy and paste it into their Terminal and perform calculations.:

## SCSAC.py

def round(x, base=5):
    return int(base * round(float(x)/base))

option = 'yes'
while (option == 'yes'):
    x=float(raw_input('How many accumulated orders do you have from retailers: '));
    y=float(raw_input('How many units are in the inventory: '));
    z=float(raw_input('How many accumulated orders have you placed: '));
    print 'Place an order of %s units' % round(((x / 25 + y / 10 + z / 25) + 115));
    print ; 
    option=raw_input("Do you wish to calculate another order? (Enter 'yes' to continue or any other key to quit):: ");
    print 

Whenever I type this code in line for line, it works perfectly. That’s because there are basically 3 seperate things happening here.

1. I define “round” which rounds a value to the nearest 5.

2. I define an option to loop the program upon completion

3. I define the actual program, and in that I round the answer and conclude with the option to loop. You may notice 2 print‘s that don’t print anything, but they are only there to have blank lines.

When I copy and paste it, I get a syntax error.
I am not a programmer and I have just been playing with this all day. I just want to know how I can edit this code so it is copy/paste-able and will run the way it is supposed to.

Answer 1

Try using IPython instead of the regular Python interpret at the shell. With IPython, you can type %cpaste, and then paste a whole chunk of code, which it will execute for you step by step, saving the intermediate variables into working memory.

If you insist on pasting it in the regular interpreter, then do it line by line, and take special care for the indentations. The indentations are usually where paste syntax errors come from.

Even better, use Emacs. Then you can just save the pasted code into a file, like test.py, type M-x shell, and then python test.py to quickly run it. Or, if you saved it to a file like test.py then in IPython you can also type %run "test.py" and it will run the code and again store intermediate variables into working memory.

If you’re copy/pasting this after making changes more than once or twice, just save it to a file and run it like a script.