print in the interactive interpreter? plus shell API idea
hi! I am sure that Python interactive interpreter is a good tool. Before it were simple to print something with print. Now extra ( and ) are needed and also extra caution. Is it possible to have some simplified "print" in the interactive interpreter? IMHO, Basic's "?" is quite a good candidate. Maybe, it should not even be Python syntax but Python interactive shell feature. cf:
print(functools.wraps.__doc__)
and
? functools.wraps.__doc__
Also, some discussions about http://bugs.python.org/issue449227 (can't recall where they were, maybe private) indicate that maybe some kind of Python shell API could be interesting to facilitate Python interpreter's interaction with shells and provide better, more dynamic, experience to the shells' users (e.g. readline-like features, inline helps and hints, etc). With the API it will be easier for "vendors" to come up with CLUI/GUI/whatever shells. Shells will be thus decoupled from the interpreter itself. (WSGI is pretty similar in intention to abstract web service interaction, maybe the one I suggest may be called Rich Interpreter Shell Gateway Interface (RISGI) or something like that). The idea is quite raw, maybe not even pre-PEPable yet, because I am not really shell developer. It also differs from the way Python gets programmatically embed into something because the interface is really meant ot be like Python interpreter's "telnet" or "X", for humans. There could be addons to the shell protocol use (debugger or profiler subshells, datastructure/class/module browser subshell/subprotocol, help subshells). Special case shells (using same protocol) may be used, eg, for mobile phone Python. To put these topics in two: "standard" Python shell may provide keystroke shortcuts for some useful cases (like, today's shell is having underscore to mean most recently calculated expression value). So, "?" will not be part of the syntax but a shell's shortcut. I think that such shell protocol is quite unique for the programming languages and may be real breakthrough in interactive shell field and/or even whole CLUI. -Roman
participants (7)
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Aahz
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Greg Ewing
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Guido van Rossum
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Leonardo Santagada
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Oleg Broytmann
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Roman Susi
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Terry Reedy