[Pythonmac-SIG] readline: where and how installed?

[Robert Kern]

Bill Janssen wrote:
> Just curious...
> 
> Is there really a need for the readline library?  On Mac, I always run
> Python shells in either (1) Terminal, or (2) xterm, or (3) an Emacs
> shell buffer.  All of them have readline capability built in.  I never
> need Python to have readline capability.  What's the use case here?

1) and 2) certainly don't have any readline capability built in to them. The
Emacs shell buffer does, but it's not the same thing as the readline module,
which IPython accesses to add its own completer functions.

-- 
Robert Kern
robert.kern at gmail.com

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco