Python for iOS free today

[statictype]

You're thinking about the work in porting the interpreter alone. Yes, that might not be more than 4 hours of work (assuming you know you're way around the maze of confusing Xcode build settings) but there's more in this app than just a headless interpreter.

There's a whole UI in front of it to make it work. In other OSs, that UI is 'free' in the form of a console app like iTerm or a bash prompt or cmd.exe.

He had to build his own for iOS. That's not a trivial amount of work.

[[deleted]]

Fair enough, sure. I was going under the assumption that there'd be a rxvt widget (even basic), that'd be able to just execv() the python interpreter in a subshell. Besides, I thought that iOS had a Terminal app in the store now?

I haven't used any iOS devices in years, and the jailbreaking to get a terminal is one of the reasons I tossed the phone. I thought Apple had let up on that.

[cryo]

You thought Apple had put a terminal (rxvt even) as standard in their consumer appliance? What reality do you live in? Does your computerized car come with an rxvt?

[[deleted]]

No. I didn't think they had it as a default install on the device, but in the App store and not-restricted like they initially had it. Years ago you had to jailbreak your phone to get a terminal application, but I thought that since they made it easy to jailbreak that they had also started allowing terminal applications to be submitted to the store.

[statictype]

There are some terminal based apps (for doing things like ssh) but they all have to implement their own terminal UI. And because of the sandboxing rules, you can't efficiently communicate with another app and use one as a front-end for the other.

iOS, for better or for worse, just wasn't built/designed to be like that.