9. Top-level components — Python 3.12.3 documentation
9. Top-level components — Python 3.12.3 documentation
3 documentation
9. Top-level components
The Python interpreter can get its input from a number of sources: from a script passed to it as standard input or as program argument, typed in
interactively, from a module source file, etc. This chapter gives the syntax used in these cases.
While a language specification need not prescribe how the language interpreter is invoked, it is useful to have a notion of a complete Python
program. A complete Python program is executed in a minimally initialized environment: all built-in and standard modules are available, but none
have been initialized, except for sys (various system services), builtins (built-in functions, exceptions and None ) and __main__ . The latter is used
to provide the local and global namespace for execution of the complete program.
The syntax for a complete Python program is that for file input, described in the next section.
The interpreter may also be invoked in interactive mode; in this case, it does not read and execute a complete program but reads and executes one
statement (possibly compound) at a time. The initial environment is identical to that of a complete program; each statement is executed in the
namespace of __main__ .
A complete program can be passed to the interpreter in three forms: with the -c string command line option, as a file passed as the first command
line argument, or as standard input. If the file or standard input is a tty device, the interpreter enters interactive mode; otherwise, it executes the file
as a complete program.
All input read from non-interactive files has the same form:
Note that a (top-level) compound statement must be followed by a blank line in interactive mode; this is needed to help the parser detect the end
of the input.
eval() is used for expression input. It ignores leading whitespace. The string argument to eval() must have the following form:
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