ANNOUNCE: pyrepl 0.5.0 (was: ANNOUNCE: Readline Alternative 1.2)

[Michael Hudson]

<skip at pobox.com> writes:

>     Chris> Question: Is anyone interested in a port to Unix/Linux/BSD?  That
>     Chris> is, are there many (indeed, any) users who hate the GPL badly
>     Chris> enough to rip out readline entirely?
> 
> Yeah, I'm sure there are a few people.  At least a few others will be
> interested in something slightly smaller than readline.

I think it's finally time to release my line reader I've been working
on on and off for about a year now: pyrepl 0.5 (it used to be called
pyrl, not that many people heard of it at all).  I've been beating on
it a bit in the last few weeks, and I think it's ready for a wider
audience.  Only tested on Linux; should work on unix in general
(wherever termios and curses get built) and should be relatively easy
to port to windows using /F's console library.

It offers:

 * sane multi-line editing 
 * history, with incremental search
 * completion, including displaying of available options
 * a fairly large subset of the readline emacs-mode keybindings
   (adding more is mostly just a matter of typing)
 * a new name (pyrepl) and a license (just the standard Python/MIT 
   liberal one)
 * a new python top-level that I *really* like; possibly my favourite 
   feature I've yet added is the ability to type

   ->> from __f

   and hit TAB to get

   ->> from __future__

   then you type " import n" and hit tab again to get:

   ->> from __future__ import nested_scopes

   (this is very addictive!).
 * no global variables, so you should be able to run two independent
   readers without having their histories interfereing (haven't tested
   this too much, to be honest, but it should work).
 * Supports Python 2.0 and 2.1.

There are still a few little bugs & misfeatures, but _I_ like, it and
use it as my python top-level most of the time.

> BTW, got a URL for your package?

Mine's at:

http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/hacks/pyrepl.html

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming,
  conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost
  hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better
  system.                                            -- Linus Torvalds