It's kind of boring to always see the >>> prompt in Python. What would be the best way to go about randomly changing the prompt prefix?
I imagine an interaction like:
This is a tobbaconist!>> import sys Sorry?>> import math Sorry?>> print sys.ps1 Sorry? What?>> According to the docs, if you assign a non-string object to sys.ps1 then it will evaluate the str function of it each time:
If a non-string object is assigned to either variable, its str() is re-evaluated each time the interpreter prepares to read a new interactive command; this can be used to implement a dynamic prompt.
Well now it's obvious, you should make it dynamic! Make an object with a __str__ method where you can place any logic you want:
class Prompt: def __str__(self): # Logic to randomly determine string return string You can also make changes or insert things into this class as you go too. So for example, you could have a list of messages in Prompt that you append to, or change, and that will affect the console message.
Try this:
>>> import sys >>> import random >>> class RandomPrompt(object): ... prompts = 'hello >', 'hi >', 'hey >' ... def __repr__ (self): return random.choice(self.prompts) ... >>> sys.ps1 = RandomPrompt() hello >1 1 hi >2 2 
__repr__() or __str__()?
__str__(). If it's not defined, it defaults to __repr__() so in this case it doesn't matter which.
def RandomPrompt(): prompts = [...]; return choice(prompts) suffice?
For changing the prompt, we use
>>>import sys >>>sys.ps1 = '=>' => Now the way to do it randomly would be something like this:
import random import sys random_prompts = ['->', '-->', '=>', 'Hello->'] sys.ps1 = random.choice(random_prompts) To execute this when your python interpreter starts, you can follow this guide: https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/appendix.html#the-interactive-startup-file
Nice question. The >>> prompt is in sys.ps1, the ... in sys.ps2. The next question would be how to change this randomly. Just as a demonstration of changing it by hand:
>>> import sys >>> sys.ps1 = '<<<' <<<sys.ps1 = '<<< ' <<< sys.ps2 = '.?. ' <<< for i in line: .?. 