Chris Rebert wrote:
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Matt Burson<msbur...@gmail.com> wrote:
Is there a way to reproduce the behavior of IDLE's restart shell ability by
using a function? I thought there would be since you can exit python by
executing the simple quit() function I thought there would be an equally
simple function name something like restart(). I'd prefer something like
this as opposed to having to exit the shell and then start it up again to
refresh it.

I believe IDLE itself implements the "restart" capability by killing
and re-launching its Python interpreter subprocess, so it's not like
it's using some hidden capability of Python to accomplish this.
Is doing Ctrl+D, up-arrow, Enter really that hard? It's even fewer
keystrokes than "restart()"...

This will do part of what you want:

>>> a=1
>>> b=1
>>> globals().clear()
>>> a
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'a' is not defined

That will not reset sys.modules, which is the only other thing I can imagine being worried about.

The main reason IDLE has a restart is so that when you run a file after editing, you can be sure the behavior you see is what you get when running the file without IDLE, with a fresh interpreter. Another use of refresh is when creating example interactive sessions for doctest or book examples. Again, one wants to make sure that the example does not depend on previous entries not included in the example. For ordinary interactive exploration, refresh is seldom needed.

tjr

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