Core Python Programming

2.2. Program Input and the raw_input() Built-in Function

The easiest way to obtain user input from the command-line is with the raw_input() built-in function. It reads from standard input and assigns the string value to the variable you designate. You can use the int() built-in function (Python versions older than 1.5 will have to use the string.atoi() function) to convert any numeric input string to an integer representation.

>>> user = raw_input('Enter login name: ')
Enter login name: root
>>> print 'Your login is:', user
Your login is: root

The above example was strictly for text input. A numeric string input (with conversion to a real integer) example follows below:

 >>> num = raw_input('Now enter a number: ') Now enter a number: 1024 ...