Message 405764 - Python tracker (original) (raw)

Message405764

Author steven.daprano
Recipients steven.daprano
Date 2021-11-05.01:53:40
SpamBayes Score -1.0
Marked as misclassified Yes
Message-id 1636077220.31.0.800245298483.issue45721@roundup.psfhosted.org
In-reply-to
Content
A frequent newbie mistake is to call shell commands from inside the interactive interpreter. Most common is to call Python itself. Here is an example where a Python instructor was allegedly unable to diagnose the issue for their students: https://windowsquestions.com/2021/10/09/syntaxerror-invalid-syntax-perhaps-you-forgot-a-comma/ I think it would be a nice feature if the compiler recognised obvious cases of "user tried to call Python from the Python prompt", and suggested a fix. If the statement matches the regex r"python\s+" the error message might say "it looks like you are trying to run a shell command at the Python prompt" rather than suggest a missing comma.
History
Date User Action Args
2021-11-05 01:53:40 steven.daprano set recipients: + steven.daprano
2021-11-05 01:53:40 steven.daprano set messageid: 1636077220.31.0.800245298483.issue45721@roundup.psfhosted.org
2021-11-05 01:53:40 steven.daprano link issue45721 messages
2021-11-05 01:53:40 steven.daprano create