decent interactive python shell on MS Windows?

[Todd Whiteman]

james.kirin39 at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> After having used Python on Linux for some time, I now have to do
> Python coding on Windows. I am big fan of the interactive Python shell
> to test, eg, regexps.
> 
> Is there an interactive Python shell on Windows that supports:
> 
> - easy copy-pasting to/from an editor? (as opposed to the cumbersome
> "mark", "copy" and then "paste" sequence that any terminal on Windows
> seems forced to adopt)
> 
> - readline-like command history (up/down for previous/next command,
> Ctr-R for searching, etc) ?
> 
> I have tried the python.org shell (difficult copy-pasting),
> ActiveState's (no readline command history) and iPython (difficult
> copy-pasting). Do you know of any decent interactive python shell on
> Windows that comes close to the friendliness of the standard one on
> Linux?

Hi James,

It sounds like a decent Editor/IDE would also fit this problem. Most 
modern Python IDE's can provide a Python interactive shell session as 
part of the editor with nice readline, copy/paste support:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments

Komodo IDE for example, comes with a nice regex helper tool for testing 
regular expressions... so there isn't as much of a need for the 
interactive shell when creating/testing regular expressions:
http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/4.4/tutorial/tourlet_rx.html#rx_top

Cheers,
Todd