[IPython-dev] Auto-calling question

[Fernando Perez]

On 2/26/07, Dan Milstein <danmil at comcast.net> wrote:
> I'm working my way through the prefilter code and I have a question
> which isn't clear from the docs (to me, at least):
>
> Are the ';', ',', and '/' escapes only supposed to be live if the
> user has %autocall on?  Or are they supposed to be live all the time?
>
> Currently, they're only live if %autocall *is* on, but the code is a
> bit confusing on that front, and I'm not 100% certain that's what's
> intended.

That code is hideously confusing and brittle, unfortunately.  I
/think/ (I honestly don't exactly remember) the original intent was
for the special first-character escapes to be always active, with the
autocall behavior controlling only the automatic addition of parens
without any user input.

So if you have a patch that restores this functionality without
breaking anything else in the beautiful plate of spaghetti that
_prefilter() is, by all means send it in :)

Regards,

f