1.2. THE PYTHON INTERPRETER AND IDLE, PART I 6
In the Firefox browser, the incremental find is excellent, and particularly useful with the single web page
version of the tutorials. (It only fails to search footnotes.) It is particularly easy to jump through different
sections in a form like 1.2.4.
1.2. The Python Interpreter and Idle, Part I
1.2.1. Your Python Folder and Python Examples.
First you need to set up a location to store your work and the example programs from this tutorial. If
you are on a Windows computer, follow just one of the three choices below to find an appropriate place to
download the example archive examples.zip, and then follow the later instructions to unzip the archive.
Your Own Computer: If you are at your own computer, you can put the folder for your Python
programs most anywhere you like. For Chapter 4, it will be important that none of the directories
leading down to your Python folder contain any blanks in them. In particular in Windows, “My
Documents” is a bad location. In Windows you can create a directory in C: drive, like C:\myPython.
You should have installed Python to continue.
Your Flash Drive: If you do not have your own computer, or you want to have your materials easily
travel back and forth between the lab and home, you will need a flash drive.
Plug your flash drive into the computer USB port.
On the computers in the Loyola lab DH 342, you can attach to the end of a cable that reaches close
to the keyboard. In DH 339, there are USB ports on the monitor. Please Note: Flash drives are
easy for me to forget and leave in the computer. I have lost a few this way. If you are as forgetful as
I, you might consider a string from the flash drive to something you will not forget to take with you.
Open My Computer (on the desktop) to see where the flash drive is mounted, and open that
drive.
Temporary: If you (temporarily) do not have a flash drive and you are at a Loyola lab computer:
Open My Computer from the desktop, and then select drive D:. Create a folder on drive D: with
your name or initials to make it easy for you to save and remove things. Change to that folder.
You should place the examples archive here. You will need to save your work somehow before you
log off of the computer. You may want to email individual files to yourself, or rezip the examples
folder and send just the one archive file to yourself each time until you remember a flash drive!
In Windows, after you have chosen a location for the archive, examples.zip, download it by right clicking on
http://cs.luc.edu/anh/python/hands-on/3.0/examples.zip and selecting “Save As” or the equivalent
on your browser and then navigate to save the archive to the chosen location on your computer. Note the
the examples, like this version of the tutorial, are for Python 3.1. There were major changes to Python in
version 3.0, making it incompatible with earlier versions.
If you are using Python version 2.5 or 2.6, you should continue with the older version of the tutorial.
Go to http://cs.luc.edu/~anh/python/hands-on and find the links to the proper version of the tutorial
and examples.
Once you have the archive, open a file browser window for that directory, right click on examples.zip,
select Extract All. This will create the folder examples. End up with a file browser window showing the
contents of the examples folder. This will be your Python folder in later discussion.
Caution 1: On Windows, files in a zip archive can be viewed while they are still in the zip archive.
Modifying and adding files is not so transparent. Be sure that you unzip the archive and work from the
regular directory that holds the resulting unzipped files.
Caution 2: Make sure that all the directories leading down to your Python examples directory do not
include any spaces in them. This will be important in Chapter 4 for the local webserver. In particular, that
means you should not place your folder under “My Documents”. A directory like C:\hands-on or C:\python
would be fine.
You also have the option of downloading
• An archive containing the web version of the tutorial http://cs.luc.edu/anh/python/hands-on/
3.0/handsonHtml.zip for local viewing, without the Internet. Download it and unzip as with the