Getting your work off the lab machine

A file you save in Sutliff 105 stays on the machine you saved it on. Your home folder is per seat, not per person, so sitting somewhere else next class means your work is not there — and the work you start in class is usually the start of that week’s assignment. So the last two minutes of every class are for this.

There are two ways. The first needs no account and takes ten seconds — use it, and treat the second as an upgrade.

1. Paste it into the Journal

  1. Click in the Pyret definitions pane (the left side, where your code is).
  2. Select all — Ctrl-A — then copy, Ctrl-C.
  3. Open the Journal on Brightspace and paste into a new attempt.

You are already signed in to Brightspace, the Journal has unlimited attempts, and it is where you write anyway. To pick the work back up at home, open your Journal entry, copy the code out, and paste it into a fresh Pyret window.

This is not a dead end and it is not second best. It is the route that works for everybody in the room.

A round trip through a web page can change characters in the code on the way. If the pasted-back version does not run, put it through Check your file before you submit.

2. Save to Google Drive from Pyret

Pyret can store your files in Google Drive. This has been checked on these machines and it works.

  • You need a Google account. A personal Gmail is fine — it does not have to be a university account.
  • In Pyret, use File → Save and sign in when it asks. Your programs land in a code.pyret.org folder in your Drive.
  • Sign out of Google before you leave, and close the browser. These are shared machines and the next person sits down at your account otherwise.

If you have a Google account already, this is worth the one-time setup: your file keeps its name, and you reopen it instead of pasting it back.

What does not work

Downloading the file to the lab machine. It looks like it worked, and the file is gone when you next sit down — possibly at a different seat. If you download, download to a USB stick or to somewhere you can reach from home.

If you are working in a pair

Both of you save a copy. The person who was not typing has nothing on their own machine at all, and the assignment is due from both of you.