Home/ Questions/Q 1000671
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-16T07:33:02+00:00

Just as the title says. I want to write a script that behaves differently

  • 0

Just as the title says. I want to write a script that behaves differently depending on whether it’s running inside a console window or in IDLE. Is there an object that exists only when running in IDLE that I can check for? An environment variable?

I’m using Python 2.6.5 and 2.7 on Windows.

Edit:

The answers given so far work. But I’m looking for an official way to do this, or one that doesn’t look like a hack. If someone comes up with one, I’ll accept that as the answer. Otherwise, in a few days, I’ll accept the earliest answer.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Google found me this forum post from 2003. With Python 3.1 (for win32) and the version of IDLE it comes with, len(sys.modules) os 47 in the command line but 122 in the IDLE shell.

    But why do you need to care anyway? Tkinter code has some annoyances when run with IDLE (since the latter uses tkinter itself), but otherwise I think I’m safe to assume you shouldn’t have to care.

    • 0