Python shell: Arrow keys not working in PuTTY

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 12:44 AM, David Aldrich
<David.Aldrich at emea.nec.com> wrote:
> I want to use the Python 3.4 interpreter interactively, via a PuTTY ssh
> session.  Python is running on Centos 5.
>
> This stackoverflow thread:
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/893053/python-shell-arrow-keys-do-not-work-on-remote-machine
>
> suggests that the problem can be fixed by installing the readline package:
>
> sudo apt-get install libreadline-dev

apt-get is for Debian-based Linuxes, but you're running a Red
Hat-based Linux. You'll be needing to use 'yum' instead, and I think
it's "libreadline-devel" or "readline-devel" for the package name.
(Apologies, I don't know CentOS very much. I'm more a Debian guy.)

Did you compile Python from source, or did it come from the CentOS
repositories? If you compiled from source, then most likely yes, you
will need to add that library and rebuild; but it won't be a *full*
rebuild - most of the interpreter isn't affected, so you'll be
compiling just the handful of files that actually use readline.

ChrisA