well, Im not sure what you've read, but the first two links I found are
4. Using Python on a Macintosh — Python 3.8.3 documentation[
^] and
Hello World in Python 3 on Mac OS X[
^]
Quote:
when I type “idle” into the terminal
... have you tried typing 'idle3' ? I thought that was how IDLE was started in a 'mixed' Python version environment
Another thing that may be worth trying is, if you do a 'python --help' you should see
Quote:
Other environment variables:
PYTHONSTARTUP: file executed on interactive startup (no default)
PYTHONPATH : ':'-separated list of directories prefixed to the
default module search path. The result is sys.path.
PYTHONHOME : alternate <prefix> directory (or <prefix>:<exec_prefix>).
The default module search path uses <prefix>/pythonX.X.
So you may need to set PYTHONHOME to point to your /usr/local/bin/python3 bin folder - that is to say, vi ~/.bashrc and add
export PYTHONHOME=/usr/local/bin/python3
under any statements or replace if there's one already set (there isnt on my Mac, but Ive only got the original Python 2 version anyway)
I hope there's something useful here - when the world wakes up someone else may have more knowledge and chip in