As described in the downloading instructions, we provide three ways for you to get the libSBML Python language interface easily without having to configure and build libSBML manually from sources. You can use (1) PyPI, the Python Package Index; (2) binary packages for use with standard Linux installation tools such as `yum` and `apt-get`; or (3) executable installers for Windows.

### If you used a libSBML Python installer

If you downloaded one of the ready-to-use Python installers for libSBML, you should not need to do anything more: you should be able to access libSBML from your Python interpreter by importing it like any other Python module. In other words, the following should work:

    from libsbml import *

### If you did not use an installer

In this case, libSBML must first be configured, compiled and installed as described in the building instructions. Once that is done, your Python interpreter will need one more thing to find libSBML: a correctly set `PYTHONPATH` environment variable. To cope with the fact that different Unix-like systems (including Mac OS X) use different conventions for where they install Python modules, the following is a general-purpose setting for `PYTHONPATH`. Here, DIR represents the value of the `--prefix=`DIR option given during configuration of libSBML (the default value is `/usr/local`) and version is the version of your copy of Python (this might be, e.g., `2.7`). If you use sh-based shells such as Bash, put this in your shell's initialization file or execute it in your shell before starting the Python interpreter:

    PYSITE=DIR/lib/version/site-packages
    PYDIST=DIR/lib/version/dist-packages
    export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$PYSITE:$PYSITE/libsbml:$PYDIST:$PYDIST/libsbml

If you use csh-based shells instead of Bash or other sh-based shells, then the appropriate syntax is the following:

    set PYSITE = DIR/lib/version/site-packages
    set PYDIST = DIR/lib/version/dist-packages
    setenv PYTHONPATH ${PYTHONPATH}:${PYSITE}:${PYSITE}/libsbml:${PYDIST}:${PYDIST}/libsbml

Once the `PYTHONPATH` variable has been set, you should be able to start the Python interpreter and type the following command to import the libSBML package for Python:

    from libsbml import *

If Python produces an import error or a failure in linking a new module, it probably means that `PYTHONPATH` has not been set correctly. It may also mean that the read/write permissions of the installed library files or a directory in the hierarchy containing them are such that you are not allowed to access the files. In that case, please consult your systems administrator or (if you have administrator priviledges) reset the permissions yourself.