Nilesh
answered Jun 24 '23 00:00
The Python shell provides an environment for quick experimentation, testing code snippets, and exploring Python's features and libraries . It is particularly useful for learning Python and prototyping code.
Python provides different types of shells, including:
Python Interactive Shell (Python REPL) :
The Python REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) is the default interactive shell that comes with the Python installation. It allows you to enter Python code one line at a time, and the interpreter executes it immediately, displaying the results. You can access the Python interactive shell by running the python or python3 command in the terminal without any script file specified.
IPython :
IPython (Interactive Python) is an enhanced Python shell that provides additional features and capabilities compared to the standard Python shell. It offers features like command history, tab-completion, object introspection, shell commands, and support for multimedia and rich media integration. IPython is commonly used for scientific computing, data analysis, and interactive exploration. You can install IPython using pip by running pip install ipython in your terminal.
Jupyter Notebook/JupyterLab :
Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab are web-based interactive computing environments that allow you to create and share documents containing live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text. They support multiple programming languages, including Python. Jupyter provides a browser-based interface where you can create notebooks and execute Python code in cells. It is widely used for data science, data analysis, machine learning, and collaborative coding. You can install Jupyter Notebook using pip by running pip install jupyter in your terminal.