hitting TAB inserts ./ in interactive mode ?

[Ned Deily]

In article 
<7b7f018e-b429-448b-94c1-2a812c5f3436 at h37g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
 Nik Krumm <nkrumm at gmail.com> wrote:
> The issue isn't with readline. The readline module or rlcompleter
> module are both available, and loading them has no effect on the
> behavior of tab:
> 
> >>> import readline
> [Now i hit tab...]
> >>> ./
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     ./
>     ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> 
> [Hit tab twice...]
> >>> ./
> ./.bash_history         ./.bash_profile         ./.bash_profile.pysave  
[...] 
> So this ostensibly makes it very hard to write or paste any code into
> the command line!

Ah, thanks, I get it now.   It turns out this is a bug seen for the 
first time with the new-style (32-/64-, 10.5+) python.org 2.7 installer 
build because it links with the Apple-supplied editline library rather 
than the GNU readline library as in other installers.  I've opened an 
issue for this:

  http://bugs.python.org/issue9907

As noted there, two workarounds come to mind.  Either switch to using 
the old-style (32-only, 10.3+) 2.7 installer;  or, add or modify a 
PYTHONSTARTUP file to force the desired TAB behavior, so something like 
this:

    $ cat > $HOME/.pystartup
    import readline
    if 'libedit' in readline.__doc__:
       readline.parse_and_bind("bind ^I ed-insert")
    ^D
    $ export PYTHONSTARTUP=$HOME/.pystartup

Thanks for reporting this!

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org