What's wrong with Windows Command Prompt (was Re: Error Testing)

[Terry Reedy]

On 10/19/2013 2:31 PM, Tim Chase wrote:
> On 2013-10-19 14:08, David Robinow wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>> You can try all these out in the interactive interpreter (you
>>> probably have IDLE installed, which on Windows is rather nicer to
>>> work with than the default interactive mode).
>>
>>   IDLE is cross-platform.  Could you explain why you say "on
>> Windows"?
>
> In my experience, the Win32 Python console lacks readline support
> (like my stock Python on the Mac OS X machine I have here), and as
> such lacks a lot of the niceties.  At least on Win32, there is
> recall of previous commands (my Mac lacks even that), but there's no
> easy "search for the previous command I typed that contains the
> following keyword" (control-R followed by search term), no easy
> "insert all matching filenames here" (alt+asterisk), etc.
>
> Idle may not provide all that, but it hopefully provides at least
> *some* basic features that the console python.exe lacks.

Command Prompt almost 'religiously' imitates the DOS character 
interface. The mouse is mostly ignored; it is not tied to the cursor. 
Idle is a normal Windows gui app.

Command Prompt displays a window of k lines of a circular queue of n 
lines, which are initialized as blank. The default n=300 is not enough 
for a test suite run or many help() outputs. If you find the box on the 
3rd tab of properties, n can be increased up to 9999, but if you do, the 
scroll bar becomes rather useless, as it scrolls through all n lines.

Idle has a normal expanding buffer, with no extra blank lines added.

CP does not have proper cut and paste. I'll leave out most of the 
obnoxious details, but selections are rectangular blocks. This is the 
only function for the mouse, and uses a separate mouse cursor. Idle has 
normal cut and paste that works like any other Windows app.

Idle can recall previous input two different ways, by cursor or key. One 
can use the mouse to select where to edit. CP requires use of arrow keys 
to move the cursor around. Idle recall input *statements*. CP recalls 
input *lines*. Previous multiline statements have to be recalled a line 
at a time. CP was not designed for true multiline commands (as opposed 
to long commands that wrap and display as multiple lines).

CP has no menu (other than a few entries when one right-clicks on the 
icon in the upper left). There is no way to directly save or print the 
buffer.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy