Question

In a tutorial, I read that that there is a difference between input and raw_input. I discovered that they changed the behavior of these functions in the Python 3.0. What is the new behavior?

And why in the python console interpreter this

x = input()

Sends an error but if I put it in a file.py and run it, it does not?

Answer 1

In python 2.x, raw_input() returns a string and input() evaluates the input in the execution context in which it is called

>>> x = input()
"hello"
>>> y = input()
x + " world"
>>> y
'hello world'

In python 3.x, input has been scrapped and the function previously known as raw_input is now input. So you have to manually call compile and than eval if you want the old functionality.

python2.x                    python3.x

raw_input()   --------------> input()               
input()  -------------------> eval(input())     

In 3.x, the above session goes like this

>>> x = eval(input())
'hello'
>>> y = eval(input())
x + ' world'
>>> y
'hello world'
>>> 

So you were probably getting an error at the interpretor because you weren’t putting quotes around your input. This is necessary because it’s evaluated. Where you getting a name error?