16.5.3.1 Command line usage

idle.py [-c command] [-d] [-e] [-s] [-t title] [arg] ...

-c command  run this command
-d          enable debugger
-e          edit mode; arguments are files to be edited
-s          run $IDLESTARTUP or $PYTHONSTARTUP first
-t title    set title of shell window

If there are arguments:

  1. If -e is used, arguments are files opened for editing and sys.argv reflects the arguments passed to IDLE itself.

  2. Otherwise, if -c is used, all arguments are placed in sys.argv[1:...], with sys.argv[0] set to '-c'.

  3. Otherwise, if neither -e nor -c is used, the first argument is a script which is executed with the remaining arguments in sys.argv[1:...] and sys.argv[0] set to the script name. If the script name is '-', no script is executed but an interactive Python session is started; the arguments are still available in sys.argv.

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