load-a-file-into-the-python-repl.md

Load A File Into The Python REPL

I opened up a Python REPL to try some things out.

$ python3
>>> import math
>>> math.floor(5/2)
2

Now, I want to reference a Python file I've been working on so that I can manually test the behavior of what I'm building. To do this, I can import a file by its name in the same way that I would import any module. Then I can use that namespace for class and method references. Crucially, the file should exist in the same directory the REPL was started from.

First, here is the file:

# bpe.py
class BytePairEncoding:
    def text_to_bytes(text: str) -> list[int]:
        """Convert a string to a list of byte values (0-255)"""
        return list(text.encode("utf-8"))

Now to use it from the REPL:

$ python
>>> import bpe
>>> bpe.BytePairEncoding.text_to_bytes("Gimme some bytes!")
[71, 105, 109, 109, 101, 32, 115, 111, 109, 101, 32, 98, 121, 116, 101, 115, 33]