venture of iit bombay vjti alumni it is an alternative module search path it is usually embedded in the pythonstartup or pythonpath directories to make switching module libraries easy running python there are three different ways to start python interactive interpreter you can start python from unixdosor any other system that provides you command-line interpreter or shell window enter python the command line start coding right away in the interactive interpreter $python unix/linux or pythonunix/linux or :python windows/dos here is the list of all the available command line options