This is hardly interesting pressing news, but it’s left an impression on me, so I choose to share: In my tinkering with python, I’ve found the python console to be a priceless tool when helping to discover syntax. In this afternoon’s example, I was wondering about different cute ways to loop through lists, so I drop to a prompt, type python, hit enter, and:
>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> a.append(4)
>>> print a
[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> while 7 not in a:
... a.append(int(raw_input('append?')))
...
append?4
append?3
append?5
append?6
append?7
>>> print a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 5, 6, 7]
>>>
OK, that skips the step where I googled, saw an example, and then wanted to try it out in a simple cases to make sure I got it. But this still demonstrates the value, right?
