HOWDY! AS REQUESTED BY POPULAR DEMAND, THE FOLLOWING ARE EASY-TO-FOLLOW

STEPS (AND SCREEN SHOTS) FOR:

1. DOWNLOADING PYTHON

2. RUNNING PYTHON

3. DOWNLOADING PYTHON CODE FOR CLASS

4. RUNNING PYTHON CODE FOR CLASS

LET’S BEGIN BY DOWNLOADING PYTHON:

Point your web browser to:

http://www.python.org/download/

…and you will see…

Out of this group, pick the appropriate Python for your system. This system runs Windows XP

system, so I chose the third link, “Python 2.4.2 Windows Installer.” But this process will work

similarly for OS X (MAC), and there is a link for OS X, too. Note that the link is highlighted,

indicating that I’ve selected that link before.

Upon clicking the link, you will see…

Click the “Save” button to save the python install file onto your computer.

I chose to save it to my desktop…as you can see below:

Upon clicking the “Save” button, the file “python-2.4.2” will download onto your computer and appear

as a shortcut on your desktop.

Lets open (run) the file by double clicking the icon on our desktop, named “python-2.4.2”. You will

have to follow the prompts and click the “Next” button a few times. **Note that if you saved this

file elsewhere on your computer, you must locate the file first in order to run it.

After completing the install, you will see the following, at which point you are done after clicking on

the “Finish” button.

IMPORTANT: After installing a program, you may be urged to open the program. BUT, the

programs we are trying to run are actually created and written for you on the course website. So

before you do anything else, let’s point the web browser to our class website:

http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~mlittman/courses/cs442-06/

And you will see….

Scroll down to the bottom of the site, click on the link, “Python code for class” and you will see:

Clicking any of the above links will display the actual code for that file.

For example, clicking on “differences.py” will display, within your browser, the code for the

differences program, like so:

This provides plenty of power and ability for you experiment and alter the code, if you wish. Stay

tuned for more on that later in the semester.

Let’s take just one step back and actually download and save the “differences.py” file onto our

computer. Click the back button on your web browser. Now, instead of normally clicking on the

“differences.py” link, go ahead and RIGHT CLICK the link. This will provide you the option to save

the file onto your computer. Click the option “Save Target As” as demonstrated below:

This will open a dialog box, allowing you to save the “differences.py” file onto your computer. For

simplicity’s sake, we will save the file onto our desktop. **Note: feel free to save this file according

to your own organizational desires. Keep in mind the location, as you must locate this file to open

(run) it.

Notice the dialog box below:

Since you have downloaded “python-2.4.2,” the “differences.py” file will appear on your desktop as a

shortcut with a cool python icon, like so:

Double click this file, and the “differences.py” program will open (run) like below. This program will

be very helpful on the homework.

By clicking on the boxes/spaces on the left of this program, you can input numbers to test the

sequence questions. Press “Enter” on your keyboard for the output. Like so:

Congratulations! Questions or comments (and they are very helpful) can be sent via email to any of

us.

Thanks!