Readline and Python 2.6.1 on a Mac

[Ned Deily]

In article 
<4632a161-ed13-477c-a40a-2b606fda1c27 at a29g2000pra.googlegroups.com>,
 James Brady <james.colin.brady at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I just upgraded Python from 2.5.2 up to 2.6.1 on my 10.5 Mac
> (installed from the DMG here: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.1/),
> and I'm having some problems with readline and rl_completer.
> 
> I have PYTHONSTARTUP pointing to this file:
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> 
> try:
>     import readline
> except ImportError:
>     print "Module readline not available."
> else:
>     import rlcompleter
>     readline.parse_and_bind("bind ^I rl_complete")
> 
> Which was working fine for tab completion in 2.5. Now, however, I
> can't enter 'b' (lower case b) in interactive python shells - no
> character appears.

Your startup file was set up for a Python (likely the Apple-supplied 
2.5) that was built using the BSD editline library for readline.  But 
the 2.6 python.org python was built with GNU readline which uses a 
different syntax.

s/"bind ^I rl_complete"/"tab: complete"/

<http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/readline.html>

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org