How can you programmatically tell the CPython interpreter to enter interactive mode when done?

Question

If you invoke the cpython interpreter with the -i option, it will enter the interactive mode upon completing any commands or scripts it has been given to run. Is there a way, within a program to get the interpreter to do this even when it has not been given -i? The obvious use case is in debugging by interactively inspecting the state when an exceptional condition has occurred.

Answer 1

You want the code module.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import code    
code.interact("Enter Here")

Answer 2

Set the PYTHONINSPECT environment variable. This can also be done in the script itself:

import os
os.environ["PYTHONINSPECT"] = "1"

For debugging unexpected exceptions, you could also use this nice recipe http://code.activestate.com/recipes/65287/