Python editing and debugging on Linux

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Python is my favorite programming language. There are many Python editors, debuggers and IDEs. Some good editors/IDE are geditor(comes with Gnome desktop by default), SPE (Stani's Python Editor) and Eric. There is a debugger with GUI called Winpdb. The default debugger is IDLE, developed by Python Software Foundation.

If I don't need to debug my program, I will only use geditor or even vim simply. If I need to debug, I will use Eric. In Eric, I have all the buttons I need on the toolbar and I can debug it without calling other programs. A trick of Eric is that I can use regular expression to hide some variables I don't want to see, as you can see in this snapshot.

The reason I mention Winpdb is because sometimes I am so lazy to hide variables I don't want to see. I just want to view certain varibales I am interested in. Winpdb provides me a way in its command console. I just need to type in "v variable_name" then I can see the value of a perticular variable.