Andy Buckley writes:
So one last question, in case it is an acceptable python-ideas topic: how about adding readline-like support by default in the interpreter?
If readline-like support is available on the system, it's used. However, it's apparently only readline-like. For example, on Mac OS X, the BSD-licensed libedit readline emulation is used by default, it appears. I wouldn't expect full functionality there. On GNU/Linux systems, as I wrote, True GNU readline is used. Why this particular function isn't bound or doesn't work right, I don't know offhand. It is apparently a bug (my Python sources are from April, but I can't see why this would change), since the sources say (ll. 927-931 of Modules/readline.c): /* Initialize (allows .inputrc to override) * * XXX: A bug in the readline-2.2 library causes a memory leak * inside this function. Nothing we can do about it. */ but even adding a binding to .inputrc doesn't work for me (Gentoo Linux). Bugs http://bugs.python.org/issue8492 http://bugs.python.org/issue5845 are related; I don't know whether it's worth filing an additional bug as I suspect it will get fixed in passing if 8492 is fixed.