A quickie: python, terminal “print command not found”

Question

Been using terminal to run python scripts written in textwrangler for about 18 months. Decided to look at possibility of moving to an IDE so downloaded a couple of trial versions. Just downloaded BBEedit and suddenly having problems executing script, either from BBedit or Textwrangler. The following code:

print "Please work"

for i in range(50):
    print i

yields the following error message:

/Users/paulpatterson/Documents/Python/Scripts/t.py: line 1: print: command not found
/Users/paulpatterson/Documents/Python/Scripts/t.py: line 3: syntax error near unexpected token `('
/Users/paulpatterson/Documents/Python/Scripts/t.py: line 3: `for i in range(50):'

Some files still work okay, but I'm struggling to figure out why others now aren't - not even sure if BBedit download has caused the problem. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

Try putting

#!/usr/bin/env python

at the top of the script. The program is trying to execute it like a shell script instead of running it through python.

Answer 2

It's running the script as a shell script, not a Python script.

Answer 3

Also, be aware that this form of print (print-as-command) is changing to print-as-a-function when you convert to Python 3. So:

print "please work"

will have to be changed to:

print ("please work")