In Python, sys.stdin is a read-only file object from which you can grab the user's input. So, if you want to test the "double" function from above, you can (should) replace sys.stdin with another file ...

so I have this script that bounces Python code to a program for scripting purposes and everything works fine until there's an indent in the code to be sent ...

The January 2021 update to the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is out with a short list of new features headed by a data viewer used while debugging.