interpreter improvements

[Skip Montanaro]

    Quinn> The other observation is that line editing belongs in the
    Quinn> terminal emulator or window system, not seperately in every
    Quinn> single program that runs under it.  If you use a terminal
    Quinn> emulator with cut and paste and line editing then all programs
    Quinn> automatically have those features.

As others (including Guido) have observed, having a line editing subsystem
that knows about the structure of the language you are using can be a boon.
With readline support I can recall individual lines I've typed at the
interpreter, however readline knows nothing about Python's block structure,
so I can't recall entire blocks that correspond to (for instance) "if",
"for", or "while" statements.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/