[Idle-dev] Clearing the environment

[Guido van Rossum]

> Conceptually I think this is doable. I could imagine two scenarios. One
> where you want the shell reset back to square one, as if you had just opened
> it up, but without losing the command history. The second would be the same
> as the first but in addition you'd want everything reloaded so that your
> local namespace was the same as when you called the hypothetical
> "shell.reset()" only it would be "fresh". Something like the following is
> what I'm thinking:
> 
> 1. if necessary, copy the command history so it won't get lost
> 2. capture the state of the interpreter
> 3. delete the interpreter object
> 4. create a new interpreter object
> 5. reload whatever to get back to the previous state

What exactly would this accomplish?  It sounds like an expensive no-op
to me...

> I'll add that to my to-do list for PyCrust:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/pycrust/

Where are the released files?  The Development Status claims 6 -
Mature, but there are no files and the home page is empty.  Do you
expect interested parties to check it out of CVS?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)