An Introduction to Python For Undergraduate Engineers/Running Python

Windows&trade;
In Microsoft™ Windows™ you can run IDLE which is a piece of software called a development environment, by clicking on Start Menu, Python, IDLE. This is a program in which you can write and run Python programs.

Linux Based Operating Systems
In a Linux operating system such as Ubuntu, you can simply use Python in the Terminal. You can write a python program using GEdit and saving the file with the ending '.py', for example:

filename.py

You can then run your program by typing the following in the terminal:

python filename.py

You must make sure your file is saved in the directory in which your terminal is in.

The rest of this wikibook shall assume that you are running Windows™ and using IDLE, everything is much the same in a Linux system or if you are running a Macintosh™.