drop into python interpreter while executing function

Question

If you want a standard interactive prompt (instead of the debugger, as shown by prestomation), you can do this:

import code
code.interact(local=locals())

See: the code module.

If you have IPython installed, and want an IPython shell instead, you can do this for IPython >= 0.11:

import IPython; IPython.embed()

or for older versions:

from IPython.Shell import IPShellEmbed
ipshell = IPShellEmbed()
ipshell(local_ns=locals())