[Python-ideas] A better interactive prompt

[Todd]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 26 October 2016 at 18:25, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The built-in REPL serves two quite divergent use cases, and I think
> > we're well past the point where we can't readily support both use
> > cases with a single implementation:
> >
> > - a minimalist interactive environment, that is *always* present, even
> > if parts of the interpreter (most notably the import system) aren't
> > working or have been deliberately disabled
> > - a day-to-day working environment for Python developers
> >
> > The prevalence of the latter use case then leads to it also being used
> > as a tool for introducing new developers to Python.
>
> Thinking a little further about this, I think the reason I don't use
> IPython more, is because my muscle memory types "python" (or more
> often, "py") when I want an interactive prompt. And I do that for the
> reason you mention - it's always there.
>
> So I think that it would be really useful to be able to plug in a new
> REPL, when it's available. This has a number of benefits:
>
>
Isn't this what aliases are for?  Just set "python" to be an alias for
"ipython" for your interactive shell.

Personally, my muscle memory is trained to always type "ipython3".  I only
type "python" or "python3" when I specifically want a vanilla shell (such
as for trying things out without all my default imports, which I know could
be done with profiles but that is even more typing).  Having "python3"
somehow changed to "ipython3" automatically would make things more
difficult for me since I would need to do something more complicated to get
back the vanilla shell when I need it.
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