"SyntaxError: 'await' outside function" when using Run cell

Issue Report Checklist

• Searched the issues page for similar reports
• Read the relevant sections of the Spyder Troubleshooting Guide and followed its advice
• Reproduced the issue after updating with conda update spyder (or pip, if not using Anaconda)
• Could not reproduce inside jupyter qtconsole (if console-related)
• Tried basic troubleshooting (if a bug/error)
  • Restarted Spyder
  • Reset preferences with spyder --reset
  • Reinstalled the latest version of Anaconda
  • Tried the other applicable steps from the Troubleshooting Guide
• Completed the Problem Description, Steps to Reproduce and Version sections below

Problem Description

IPython allows using await keyword outside functions, which is very helpful for debugging (%autoawait magic).

Consider the following snippet:

async def ping():
    return "pong"

await ping()

What steps reproduce the problem?

1. Create new file, copy above snippet
2. Run > Run cell

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

• Expected output: “pong”
• Actual result: SyntaxError: ‘await’ outside function

Note that selected the code and performing Run > Run selection (F9) gives the expected “pong”.

Running the file (Run >Run, F5) also gives a SyntaxError, which I consider being the correct behaviour.

As a comparison, Visual Code gives a SyntaxError when running the file, but runs successfully when running the cell. For me, this is the best behaviour, hence the present ticket.

Versions

Freshly installed from conda create -n spyder spyder

• Spyder version: 4.2.3 None

• Python version: 3.9.2 64-bit

• Qt version: 5.9.7

• PyQt5 version: 5.9.2

• Operating System: Windows 10

• IPython 7.21.0

[ccordoba12]

Hey @nbud, thanks for reporting. I didn’t know that IPython allows you to do that.

For now, I think you need to switch from using the runcell command to paste the contents of cells directly into the console. For that, you need to go to the menu:

Tools > Preferences > Editor > Run Code

and activate the option called Copy full cell contents to the console when running code cells.

[ccordoba12]

Therefore it doesn’t really make sense to expect a random await in a python file.

Ok, I understand that and it makes sense to me.

I am not sure what the solution is here.

I think the only possible solution for now is to avoid using runcell, as I mentioned above. So I’m going to close this one.