Using Python from the Command Line

The Terminal

1. Identify and open the terminal application on your personal computer.
2. Define the following terms:
   • Shell
   • Command-line interface
   • Graphical user interface

Navigating Your Computer via a CLI

1. Make the basic analogy between your computer’s filesystem and a filing cabinet with folders.
2. State a reasonable directory structure for this course.
3. Use the following commands to navigate and inspect the filesystem on your computer using your terminal application:
   • pwd
   • ls
   • cd
   • mkdir
4. Recognize that ~ expands to your home directory in most shell interfaces.
5. Know to avoid spaces in file and directory names, and explain why they should be avoided.
6. Use man to access the documentation for a shell command.

IPython

1. Access IPython through your terminal application.
2. Use IPython interactively to run Python statements.
3. Use who and whos to query the environment variables in a session of IPython.
4. Use ? to access the documentation for Python functions in IPython.

Python Scripts

1. Explain what a Python script is.
2. Give the file extension for a Python script.
3. Compare and contrast a Python script and a Jupyter notebook.
4. Create a Python script on your computer and edit it using a text editor such as Sublime Text.
5. Run a Python script from an IPython session.
6. Recognize that you must make the directory containing a Python script your current working directory before running the script in an IPython session.
7. Use paste to run chunks of Python code in an IPython session.

Jupyter Notebooks and JupyterLab

1. Access Jupyter notebooks from your terminal application.
2. Access JupyterLab from your terminal application.