Homework 0

Introduction

This assignment gets you started with the basic tools you will need to complete all of your homework projects. This project will

• ensure that you have correctly installed Python 3
• give you practice using a text editor to write Python programs, and
• give you practice running Python programs and using command line features.

Problem Description

You are a student who needs to install Python, configure it for command line use, and learn how to use a programmer’s text editor to create and edit Python source code.

Solution Description

• Download and install Python 3 on your computer and configure your sytem so you can run Python from the command line. See the instructions on the class web site.
• Download and install a programmer’s text editor. You may end up trying out several over the course of the semester before you settle on one. See the Text Editors guide on the class web site.
• Create a directory for your coursework somewhere on your hard disk, such as python-course. Note: avoid putting spaces in file and directory names, since doing so complicates the use of some command line tools.
• Create a hw0 subdirectory of your coursework directory for your HW0 solution.

On Unix/BASH you can create both of these directories at once with

mkdir -p python-course/hw0

Windows uses the same commands for directory navigation and creation, cd and mkdir, but Windows’s mkdir command doesn’t have the -p option.

• On the command line, go to the hw0 directory you just created and enter these commands:

python --version > hw0-output.txt

> redirects the output of a program, in this case to the hw0-output.txt file. Some versions of Python, such as the one installed by Anaconda and miniconda, write the Python version to stderr instead of stdout, so replace the > in the command bove with 2>. > redirects stdout and 2> redirects stderr. For more information, this blog post has a nice discussion of the file descriptors stdin, stdout and stderr.

• Open your text editor, create a file in your newly created hw0 directory named nimbly_bimbly.py and save the following Python program in the file:

print("\u004D\u0065\u006F\u0077 " * 9)
print("...")
print("\u004D\u0065\u006F\u0077\u0021")

• In your OS command shell, cd to your hw0 directory and enter python nimbly_bimbly.py to run the program and see its output on the command line.
• Add the output of your program to hw0-output.txt by running\ python nimbly_bimbly.py >> hw0-output.txt. Don’t forget the extra > in >>. >> appends to an existing file, a single > overwrites an existing file.