Invoking the Jython Interpreter

Jython can be invoked from the shell using the following command:

jython [options] [-jar jar | -c cmd | file | -] [args]

-i	inspect interactively after running script, and force prompts, even if stdin does not appear to be a terminal
-S	don't imply import site on initialization
-Dprop=value	Set the jython property prop to value
-jar jar	program to run is read from the __run__.py file in the specified jar file
-c cmd	program to run is passed in as the cmd string. This option terminates the options list
file	run file as the program script
-	program is read from standard-in (default; interactive mode is used if on a tty). This flag allows you to pipe a file into Jython and have it be treated correctly. This would be useful in a case like: filter file | jython -
--help	print a usage message and exit
--version	print Jython version number and exit
args	arguments passed to the program in sys.argv[1:]

Details

jython is a short script that invokes your local JVM, sets the Java property install.path to an appropriate value, and then runs the Java classfile org.python.util.jython.

Making Jython Scripts Executable

To make a jython ".py" file executable on a Unix system you can add the following line to the top of the file:

#! /usr/bin/env jython

For this magic to work, you must have jython somewhere on your standard PATH. You also must also make the ".py" file executable. Typically this is done with the command: chmod +x foo.py.

Note: "#! <...>/jython" will probably not work to make your script executable. This is because "jython" is itself a script, and the #! magic requires that the file to execute is a binary executable on most Unix variants. Using "/usr/bin/env" will get around this problem - and make your scripts more portable in the bargain.