# Using a Python source code



## lancea (Feb 4, 2012)

I am a cancer therapy research scientist and am attempting to use a bioinformatics program on my mac. The source code was downloaded in a folder that contains .py files. The program is the Ribosome-Binding-Site-Calculator. A version of this program runs on the web:

https://salis.psu.edu/software/

However, it is slow due to the que of many users. I would like to run it on my mac. I am not familiar with running this type of source code. I have downloaded and installed Python 2.7 and opened up the .py files in windows in IDLE. I have opened terminal and dropped the .py files into the terminal window. It is still unclear how to run this on my mac.

Any programmers or bioinformaticists out there that can help?


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## szymczyk (Feb 6, 2012)

A relatively easy option is to download the text editor TextWrangler and open the python files there. You can run python scripts from TextWrangler using the #! (shebang) menu.


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## Mikuro (Feb 6, 2012)

You can always run a .py file by invoking the python command with the file as an argument. From Terminal:
	
	



```
python /path/to/file.py
```

Are there any problems specific to this program? If so, please post the output of the python command.


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