PYTHON3(1)

💖 PYTHON3 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for python3 — section 1, and yeah, the source line up there says receptorctl, which is iconic of it honestly. This page is the "Receptor daemon client" and it's basically the group chat rules for talking to Python from your shell. 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

python3 — Receptor daemon client 🦋

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Here's the vibe check on how you actually call it:

python3 [option] ... [-c cmd | -m mod | file | -] [arg] ...

Not me giving you Options and the environment variables that go with them, because of course there are env vars, there are always env vars 🙈. Scroll down, they're all here, every single one.

🎀 Arguments 🎀

• file — a program that gets read straight from a script file
• - — the program gets read from stdin (this is the default; and if it's a tty you land in interactive mode, main character energy)
• arg ... — the arguments passed to your program in sys.argv[1:]

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -b — throw warnings when you convert bytes/bytearray to str, or when you compare bytes/bytearray with str or bytes with int. (-bb: upgraded to full-on errors 💀)
• -B — dont write .pyc files on import; also PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=x
• -c cmd — the program is passed in as a string (and heads up: this terminates the option list)
• -d — turn on parser debugging output (for experts only, and it only works on debug builds); also PYTHONDEBUG=x
• -E — ignore PYTHON* environment variables (like PYTHONPATH)
• -h — print this help message and exit (also -? or --help)
• -i — inspect interactively after running the script; it forces a prompt even if stdin doesn't look like a terminal; also PYTHONINSPECT=x
• -I — isolate Python from the user's environment (it implies -E, -P and -s)
• -m mod — run a library module as a script (this one terminates the option list too)
• -O — remove assert and __debug__-dependent statements; add .opt-1 before the .pyc extension; also PYTHONOPTIMIZE=x
• -OO — does everything -O does and discards docstrings; add .opt-2 before the .pyc extension
• -P — don't prepend a potentially unsafe path to sys.path; also PYTHONSAFEPATH
• -q — don't print version and copyright messages on interactive startup
• -s — don't add the user site directory to sys.path; also PYTHONNOUSERSITE=x
• -S — don't imply 'import site' on initialization
• -u — force the stdout and stderr streams to be unbuffered; lowkey important: this option has no effect on stdin; also PYTHONUNBUFFERED=x
• -v — verbose (it traces import statements); also PYTHONVERBOSE=x. and yes you can hand it over multiple times to crank the verbosity up 📈
• -V — print the Python version number and exit (also --version). give it twice and it prints more information about the build ✨
• -W arg — warning control; arg is action:message:category:module:lineno; also PYTHONWARNINGS=arg
• -x — skip the first line of source, which lets you use non-Unix forms of #!cmd
• -X opt — set an implementation-specific option
• --check-hash-based-pycs always|default|never — control how Python invalidates hash-based .pyc files
• --help-env — print help about Python environment variables and exit
• --help-xoptions — print help about implementation-specific -X options and exit
• --help-all — print complete help information and exit

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

The full documentation for python3 is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and python3 programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info python3

should give you access to the complete manual. go off, info 👑

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not me writing a whole shoutout section but fr fr, go read the Texinfo one when you want the deep lore 🫶

k that's the whole page bestie, slay. it's python3 version 1.6.6, dated June 2026, page PYTHON3(1) — and with that, periodt. 💖✨🎀