Pasting multiple lines into IDLE

Question

Is there a way to paste a block of code into IDLE? Pasting line by line works, but sometimes I'd like to paste many lines at once. When I try, IDLE reads the first line and ignores the rest.

>>> a = 1
b = 2
c = 3

>>>
>>> a
1
>>> b

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#3>", line 1, in <module>
    b
NameError: name 'b' is not defined

Cassiopeia

Answer 1

Probably not the most beautiful procedure, but this works:

cmds = '''

paste your commands, followed by ''':

a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
'''

Then exec(cmds) will execute them.

Or more directly,

exec('''

then paste your commands, followed by '''):

a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
''')

It's just a trick, maybe there's a more official, elegant way.

Caliphate

that works, but I was really hoping for something more elegant. It's pretty common to paste a bunch of lines into IDLE. Testing parts of code from an IDE or running stuff posted on SO or whatever. – Cassiopeia

Yes, I often ran into the same issue and asked myself the same question... Same happens when pasting indented part of code, "solved" by typing if True: then pasting the code. A bit of a dirty trick ;-) – Caliphate

using pyscripter.. copy code from anywhere say a function... and then right click in interpreter... choose "paste and execute". and this will work nicely for multiline paste. – Aksoyn

Nice trick! To get rid of copied indentation one can use stdlib textwrap.dedent(exec(cmds)). – Berget

Answer 2

IdleX provides the PastePyShell.py extension for IDLE which allows pasting of multiple lines into the shell for execution.

United

Answer 3

See this other post: Python, writing multi line code in IDLE You can use an editor (File > New File), write your lines of code there and use F5

Epizoic

That requires committing it to disk, an extra hassle (extra time, finding an appropriate place, inventing a name, getting rid of it later, etc.) – Hassett

Answer 4

Based on the answer of RedGlyph, but with some automation using AutoHotkey (AHK):

; Python IDLE shell
#IfWinActive ahk_exe pythonw.exe

^+x::  ; IDLE - multiple commands paste
SoundBeep,1700, 150
send, ^{end}
var1 = cmds = '''
var2 := clipboard
var3 = %var1%%var2%
var4 = %var3%'''
msgbox,,, %var4%,2
clipboard = %var4%
send, ^{vk0x56}   ;send, ^v
send, {enter}
sleep, 1000
send, exec(cmds)
return

You need to install AutoHotkey to make this work. After installing AutoHotkey, the above code sample must be saved in a file with extension AHK (e.g., Idle.ahk), and should be running always to enable the shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + X to make the string manipulation for you.

Garmon