Editing Community Data Science Course (Spring 2015)/Day 1 Tutorial (section)

==Python scripts==

[[File:Treasure_map.png|100px]]

Until now we've been using the interactive Python interpreter. This is great for learning and experimenting, but you can't easily save or edit your work. For bigger projects, we'll write our Python code in a file. Let's get some practice with this!

<ol>
<li>Download the file http://mako.cc/teaching/2014/cdsw/nobel.py by right-clicking on it and saying to save it as a ".py" file to your Desktop. The ".py" extension hints that this is a Python script.</li>
<li>Open a terminal prompt, and use the navigation commands (<code>dir</code> and <code>cd</code> on Windows, <code>ls</code>, <code>pwd</code>, and <code>cd</code> on OS X and Linux) to navigate to your Desktop directory. See [[Community Data Science Workshops (Fall 2014)/Day 0 setup and tutorial#Goal_.234:_practice_navigating_the_computer_from_a_terminal|navigating from a terminal]] for a refresher on those commands.</li>
<li>Once you are in your Desktop directory, execute the contents of <code>nobel.py</code> by typing

 python nobel.py

at the terminal prompt.

<code>nobel.py</code> introduces two new concepts: comments and multiline strings.</li>

<li>Open <code>nobel.py</code> in your text editor (see [[Community Data Science Workshops (Fall 2014)/Day 0 setup and tutorial#Goal_.232:_prepare_a_text_editor|preparing your text editor]] for a refresher on starting the editor).</li>
<li>Read through the file in your text editor carefully and check your understanding of both the comments and the code.</li>
</ol>

Study the script until you can answer these questions:
<ol>
<li>How do you comment code in Python?</li>
<li>How do you print just a newline?</li>
<li>How do you print a multi-line string so that whitespace is preserved?</li>
</ol>