[Python-ideas] A better interactive prompt

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Thu Oct 27 08:12:13 EDT 2016


On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 10:35:32AM +0100, Paul Moore wrote:

> The Windows default command line editing experience is a lot better
> (IMO) than the (non-readline) Unix default, and it's common throughout
> all interactive prompts (Python's REPL included). As a result, when
> readline is installed (pyreadline on Windows, which used to be needed
> for IPython) it disrupts the "normal" editing experience. It's
> possible that with a bit of configuration and practice I could get
> used to the readline experience, but then I get a different experience
> when in a venv where I don't have pyreadline installed.

Ah, that makes sense.


> The idea that simply having a module called "readline" available,
> changes the REPL behaviour, with no way to configure that, seems
> incredibly hostile to me.

I think that making readline less aggressive (at least for Windows 
users) may be a reasonable feature request for 3.7.


-- 
Steve


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