Any arguments provided after the version are passed along as per usual. To select a specific installation of Python, just pass the version as the first element in the argument list. If we have the py launcher, we just type: py -m pip install -U pip For instance, here is the command typically used to upgrade pip, by running it as a module: python -m pip install -U pip To run a Python script with the py launcher, simply substitute py and its command-line switches for python or python3. But if you upgraded your Python 3.8 installation afterward, py wouldn’t be touched since the installer would detect the existence of a newer version. For instance, if you installed Python 3.8 and then Python 3.9, the latter version would upgrade py. Whenever a new version of Python is installed, the py launcher will be updated, as long as the Python version being installed is newer than the py launcher. If you use just -2 or -3 as the version switch, Python will launch the most recent version of Python 2.x or Python 3.x, as indicated. In the above example, if we typed py -3.10, we’d get the 64-bit version of Python 3.10, because only the 64-bit version is present. If you don’t specify a bitness, and only one bitness of a particular version is installed, that bitness will be loaded by default. IDGįour examples of the py launcher in action. So if we just typed py -3.9, we’d get the 64-bit version of Python 3.9. On a 64-bit machine, that would be the 64-bit edition. Note that if you provide only a version number, and not a bitness indicator, you’ll default to whichever version of Python is native to your machine’s processor type. For instance, to launch the 64-bit edition of Python 3.9, you would type py -3.9-64. To invoke a specific edition of Python, type py followed by the switch in the left-hand column for the appropriate version. The interpreter marked with an asterisk is the default. You’ll be presented with a list of all the known interpreters in the system, their version numbers, and their full paths.

To see which versions of Python are available to py, type py -0p.

py by itself will drop you into the Python REPL, which you can exit as you normally would by typing quit() or Ctrl-Z. When you type py at the command line, the launcher will invoke the current default Python interpreter. In the next screen, make sure the “py launcher” option is checked. When installing Python on Windows, select the “Customize installation” option during setup.

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