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# Overview

Spyder is a Python development environment with the following key features:

Key features:

> - general features:
>   - MATLAB-like PYTHONPATH management dialog box (works with all consoles)
>   - Windows only: current user environment variables editor
>   - direct links to documentation (Python, Matplotlib, !NumPy, !Scipy, etc.)
>   - direct link to Python(x,y) launcher
>   - direct links to !QtDesigner, !QtLinguist and !QtAssistant (Qt documentation)
> - preferences dialog box:
>   - keyboard shortcuts
>   - syntax coloring schemes (source editor, history log, object inspector)
>   - console: background color (black/white), automatic code completion, etc.
>   - and a lot more...
> - Editor:
>   - syntax coloring (Python, C/C++, Fortran)
>   - breakpoints and conditional breakpoints (debugger: pdb)
>   - run or debug Python scripts (see console features)
>   - run configuration dialog box:
>     - working directory
>     - command line options
>     - run in a new Python interpreter or in an existing Python/IPython interpreter
>     - Python interpreter command line options
>   - code outline explorer: functions, classes, if/else/try/... statements
>   - powerful code introspection features (powered by rope):
>     - code completion
>     - calltips
>     - go-to-definition: go to object (any symbol: function, class, attribute, etc.) definition by pressing Ctrl+Left mouse click on word or Ctrl+G (default shortcut)
>   - occurence highlighting
>   - typing helpers (optional):
>     - automatically insert closing parentheses, braces and brackets
>     - automatically unindent after ‘else’, ‘elif’, ‘finally’, etc.
>   - to-do lists (TODO, FIXME, XXX)
>   - errors/warnings (real-time code analysis provided by pyflakes)
>   - integrated `pylint` code analysis
>   - direct link to winpdb external debugger
> - Console:
>   - all consoles are executed in a separate process
>   - code completion/calltips and automatic link to object inspector (see below)
>   - open Python interpreters, IPython interpreters or basic terminal command windows
>   - run Python scripts (see source editor features)
>   - variable explorer:
>     - GUI-based editors for a lot of data types (numbers, strings, lists, arrays, dictionaries, ...)
>     - import/export data from/to a lot of file types (text files, !NumPy files, MATLAB files)
>     - multiple array/list/dict editor instances at once, thus allowing to compare variable contents
>     - data visualization
> - History log
> - Object inspector:
>   - provide documentation or source code on any Python object (class, function, module, ...)
>   - documentation may be displayed as an html page thanks to the rich text mode (powered by sphinx)
> - Online help: automatically generated html documentation on installed Python modules
> - Find in files: find string occurences in a directory, a mercurial repository or directly in PYTHONPATH (support for regular expressions and included/excluded string lists)
> - Explorer
> - Project Explorer (support Pydev project import)

Spyder may also be used as a PyQt4 or PySide extension library (module ‘spyderlib’). For example, the Python interactive shell widget used in Spyder may be embedded in your own PyQt4 or PySide application.

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