curses.initscr doesn't work

[zaphod424]

so Ive written a program, using the curses module to open a window, however when I run it I get an error message:

Error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/alex/Documents/Programming things/game.py", line 10, in <module>
    s = curses.initscr()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/curses/__init__.py", line 30, in initscr
    fd=_sys.__stdout__.fileno())
_curses.error: setupterm: could not find terminal

the first few lines of the program, where the problem lies, are:

import random
import curses

s = curses.initscr()
curses.curs_set(0)
sh, sw = s.getmaxyx()
window = curses.newwin(sh, sw, 0,0)
window.keypad(1)
window.timeout(100)

unless ive just missed something, (im fairly new to python, so this is very possible) I can't see whats gone wrong, and why it fails to find the terminal.

im using python 3.6, and running it on OSX 10.13.3

[Gribouillis]

Did you run the program in a terminal or in a python IDE?

[zaphod424]

Did you run the program in a terminal or in a python IDE?

yes I used both the pycharm IDE and IDLE, both gave the same error

[Gribouillis]

Curses won't normally work in an IDE. It works only if you are running the python program from a terminal. Open a terminal and type

Output:
python3 /Users/alex/Documents/Programming things/game.py

(you may have to replace python3 with /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin/python for example)