Idle's Shell: prompts and indents (was ...) Idle users please read

[Terry Reedy]

On 7/20/2014 11:34 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 1:28 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> A few users have noticed (and complained) that setting sys.ps1 and sys.ps2
>> *in the batch mode user process* has no effect. The Idle doc should better
>> explain why this is and should be.  User code should not affect the
>> operation of Idle. Idle is separately configured through dialogs.
>
> As I understand it, setting them has *absolutely* no effect,
> currently, right?

As far as I know, setting sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 have no effect in any 
batch mode program.  This has nothing to do with Idle.

> There's no situation in which it would be useful to
> set them? In that case, it might be useful to put some magic in there
> (although I'm not sure it's possible; can't use @property at top level
> in a module) that gives a notification - pointing users to the dialog.

In general, Idle should execute user code the same way that the 
interpreter does, subject to the limitations of the different execution 
environment.

> No idea how you'd go about it, but telling someone when what s/he does
> is useless can be helpful.

What needs better documentation is what the execution environment is, 
and how the shell is different from a line-buffered console.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy