I have Anaconda3 installed with python 3.4, on Windows 8. In the interest of really trying to understand what's going on, I'm practicing all the different ways to run a script - using the 'Run file' button in Spyder, using the console in Spyder, command line within Powershell, and command line after starting python in Powershell.

I was curious as to why the 'runfile' command works in the Spyder console but not in python within Powershell. That is, I can put this in in the Spyder console:

 In [1]: runfile('endome\pythonscript.py')

but, when I try to do the same thing after launching python in Powershell, runfile isn't recognized:

>>> runfile('endome\pythonscript.py')
 Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "(stdin)", line 1, in (module)
NameError: name 'runfile' is not defined

Now, I did learn how to run a script in Powershell using:

>>> exec(open('endome\pythonscript.py').read())

But, I'm just curious why runfile works in Spyder but not in Powershell (or cmd for that matter).