How to take input in Python?

Taking input is a way of interact with users, or get data to provide some result. Python provides two built-in methods to read the data from the keyboard. These methods are given below.

input(prompt)
raw_input(prompt)

input()

The input function is used in all latest version of the Python. It takes the input from the user and then evaluates the expression. The Python interpreter automatically identifies the whether a user input a string, a number, or a list. Let's understand the following example.

Example -

# Python program showing
# a use of input()

name = input("Enter your name: ")
print(name)

Output:

Enter your name: Devansh
Devansh

The Python interpreter will not execute further lines until the user enters the input.

Let's understand another example.

Example - 2

# Python program showing
# a use of input()
name = input("Enter your name: ")  # String Input
age = int(input("Enter your age: ")) # Integer Input
marks = float(input("Enter your marks: ")) # Float Input
print("The name is:", name)
print("The age is:", age)
print("The marks is:", marks)

Output:

Enter your name: Johnson
Enter your age: 21
Enter your marks: 89
The name is: Johnson
The age is 21
The marks is: 89.0

Explanation:

By default, the input() function takes input as a string so if we need to enter the integer or float type input then the input() function must be type casted.

age = int(input("Enter your age: ")) # Integer Input
marks = float(input("Enter your marks: ")) # Float Input

We can see in the above code where we type casted the user input into int and float.

How input() function works?

The flow of the program has stopped until the user enters the input.
The text statement which also knows as prompt is optional to write in input() function. This prompt will display the message on the console.
The input() function automatically converts the user input into string. We need to explicitly convert the input using the type casting.
raw_input() - The raw_input function is used in Python's older version like Python 2.x. It takes the input from the keyboard and return as a string. The Python 2.x doesn't use much in the industry. Let's understand the following example.

Example -

# Python program showing
# a use of raw_input()

name = raw_input("Enter your name : ")
print name

Output:

Enter your name: Peter
Peter

How to check Python version?

To check the Python version, open command line (Windows), shell (Mac), or terminal (Linux/Ubuntu) and run python -version. It will display the corresponding Python version.

Check Python version in the running script

We can check the Python version in our running script. Consider the following ways to know Python version in all operating systems.

Commands	Operating System/Environment	Output
Python --version or Python -v or Python -vv	Window/Mac/Linux	Python 3.8.1
import sys sys.version sys.version_info	Python Script	3.8.3 (default, May 13 2020, 15:29:51) [MSC v.1915 64 bit (AMD64)]
Import platform platform.python_version()	Python Script	'3.8.1'