rlcompleter not calling __getattr__ on [ ]

[Jaco Schieke]

Fernando Pérez <fperez528 at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<a9mv1o$7jh$1 at peabody.colorado.edu>...
> Jaco Schieke wrote:
> 
> > Being new to interactive python, I have the problem that rlcompleter
> > does not seem to be able to resolve the items in a list:
> > 
> > This works as expected:
> > ======================================
> >>>> import readline, atexit, rlcompleter
> >>>> readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')
> >>>> a=[[],"",1]
> >>>> a.<tab>
> > a.append   a.count    a.extend   a.index    a.insert   a.pop
> > a.remove   a.reverse  a.sort
> > 
> > 
> > Now is this also supposed to work?
> > ==================================
> >>>> a[0].<tab>
> > .   ..         <---- this is the output I receive
> >                      instead of the properties of an []
> > 
> > 
> > 'cause this works:
> > ==================================
> >>>> b=a[0]
> >>>> b.<tab>
> > b.append   b.count    b.extend   b.index    b.insert   b.pop
> > b.remove   b.reverse  b.sort
> 
> I was going to ask the same thing as I'm inclined to think this is a bug: 
> readline has '[' and ']' as part of its internal list of word delimiters, so 
> when you do 
> a[0].<tab>
> it breaks the word at ']' and sees a bare '.', hence the completions you get. 
> So far so good.
> 
> BUT: if you change the list of delimiters (with readline.set_delimiters()) to 
> remove '[' and ']', the problem persists. That's the part I think to be a bug 
> (I could be wrong, but I'd like to understand why if that's the case). At 
> this point it shouldn't break at ']' anymore, and the completion should be 
> done on the full 'a[0]'. I put print statements in the rlcompleter code to 
> see this and indeed, readline _is_ breaking on ']' even after removing the 
> character from the list of delimiters.
> 
> Unfortunately the completion code is in C and I don't have the sources around, 
> so I haven't had the chance to take a look at this.
> 
> I'd love to hear from someone who knows the code as to this behavior really is 
> a bug or not before shooting off to SF and looking like an idiot :)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> f.


Looks like the regexp in rlcompleter that searches the string does not
work correctly.  After changing the line

> m = re.match(r"(\w+(\.\w+)*)\.(\w*)", text)

to 

> m = re.match(r"([\w\[\]]+(\.[\w\[\]]+)*)\.(\w*)", text)

it matched on the brackets too and could get to the objects.  I also
had to change the delimiters to exclude [].