[Python-Dev] Incorrect documentation of the raw_input built-in function

[Mike Kent]

 <skip <at> pobox.com> writes:

> 
> 
>     Isaac> Have people actually verified that the prompt is really sent to
>     Isaac> stderr right now by using 2>/dev/null to attempt to suppress it?
> 
> Good point.  On my machine at work (Solaris), Python 2.4 seems to send its
> raw_input prompt to stdout, not stderr:
> 

> 
> Same for 2.6a0 on my Mac at home.  Mike, are you sure about it prompting to
> stderr?  If so, what's your setup?
> 
> Skip

Skip, Guido and others:

Interesting point about whether GNU readline is installed.  My setup is RedHat
Linux, with Python 2.5 that I built and installed myself.  GNU readline is not,
in fact, installed.  If you look at Python2.5/Parser/myreadline.c, function
PyOS_StdioReadline, line 125, you will see that prompt output is being sent to
stderr.  As best as my Python-fu can determine, this is the code used to output
a raw_input prompt (thanks again to Gabriel Genellina for pointing me in the
right direction.)

It's entirely likely that the difference in what I am seeing and what you guys
are seeing is caused by my not having GNU readline installed.  Nevertheless,
the behavior without it seems wrong, and is certainly different from the
documentation.