[Python-Dev] New commands to display licence, credits, copyright info

[Guido van Rossum]

> I like Bob W's suggestion a lot.  It is more open-ended and scalable
> than just continuing to add more and more lines to the startup
> messages.  I assume these commands would only be in effect in
> interactive mode, right?

Actually, for the benefit of tools like IDLE (which have an
interactive read-eval-print loop but don't appear to be interactive
during initialization), they are always added.  They are implemented
as funny builtins, whose repr() prints the info and then returns "".

> You could also maybe add a "help" command, which, if nothing else,
> could get people pointed at the online tutorial/manuals.

Sure -- and "doc".  Later, after 2.0b1.

> And, by all means, please keep the compiler version in the startup
> message!

Will do.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)