Yes, this is a python question, and a serious one at that (moving to Win XP)

[John J. Lee]

Kenneth McDonald <kenneth.m.mcdonald at sbcglobal.net> writes:
[...]
> absolutely preventing me from making the switch. Number one is the  
> lack of a decent command line and command-line environment, and I'm  
> wondering (hoping) if perhaps someone has written a "Python shell"-- 
> something that will look like a regular shell, let users type in  
> commands, maybe have some of the nice features of bash etc. like tab  
> completion, etc, and will then execute an underlying python script  
> when the command is entered. I'm not thinking of IDLE, but something  
> that is really aimed more at being a system terminal, not a Python- 
> specific terminal.
[...]

cmd.exe can be made bearable.  I just got a new machine, so I'll have
to do this myself in the next few days...

0. Make a shortcut to cmd.exe, stick it somewhere get-at-able,
   eg. quick launch toolbar

1. Somewhere under the menu reachable from the little icon in the
   top-left corner you can set the default directory when cmd is
   launched, plus there's some way to set up env vars (eg. PYTHONPATH)

2. Fiddle with buffers to make them sensible sizes (that menu again).

3. Adjust colours to taste (menu again).

4. There's a registry key for tab completion somewhere...

5. Make sure .py is associated with the Python you want


Also see IPython, which does do shell-ish things as well as python-ish
things.



John