[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Console input in the IDE?

[Christopher Smith]

> I'd like to avoid that awful Input window in the IDE that comes up 
> whenever I call raw_input().

<cut>

The following is a step toward what you are looking for.  It doesn't 
allow editing of the input line, but if that's not a problem then it 
will do the string input and echo the keypresses to the output window.
When you hit a backspace a character is echoed to the screen and a 
character is subtracted from the string to be returned but the character
is not erased on teh screen.

Also, this prompt() function doesn't make the output window active so
if you request input you have to make sure that the output window is
visible before you do or else you won't be able to see that data is being
requested.

Below, inkey() is used by prompt()

HTH,
/c

####
def inkey():
	"""
	A function which returns the current ASCII key that is down;
	if no ASCII key is down, the null string is returned.  The
	page http://www.mactech.com/macintosh-c/chap02-1.html was
	very helpful in figuring out how to do this.  If cmd-. is
	pressed without the shift key a -1 is returned.
	"""
	#cps 4/2002
	import Carbon
	if Carbon.Evt.EventAvail(0x0008)[0]==0: # 0x0008 is the keyDownMask
		return ''
	else:
		#
		# The event contains the following info:
		# (what,msg,when,where,mod)=Carbon.Evt.GetNextEvent(0x0008)[1]
		# 
		# The message (msg) contains the ASCII char which is
		# extracted with the 0x000000FF charCodeMask; this
		# number is converted to an ASCII character with chr() and 
		# returned
		#
		(what,msg,when,where,mod)=Carbon.Evt.GetNextEvent(0x0008)[1]
		if mod & 0x0100 and mod & 0x0200 == 0:  #cmd and not shift
			return -1
		return chr(msg & 0x000000FF)

def prompt(say):
	"""
	A function that waits for a carriage return and concatenates
	keyboard presses in the mean time and returns these presses
	as a \n terminated string.  If the user presses cmd-. without
	the shift key down, a null string is returned; if the user
	only typed chr(13) then a '\n' is returned.
	"""
	
	#cps 4/2002
	import sys,Carbon
	sys.stdout._buf = say or '? '
	sys.stdout.flush()
	ans=''
	x=inkey()
	while x<>-1 and x<>chr(13):
		if x:
			if ord(x)<>8:
				ans+=x
			else:
				ans=ans[:-1]
		x=inkey()
		if x<>-1 and x<>'':
			#don't know how to erase a character from the display, though.
			#I suppose that if you detect a backspace you could print on
			#a new line all the characters that have been entered so far.
			sys.stdout._buf=x
			sys.stdout.flush()
	if x == -1:
		return '' #got a user cancel
	else:
		return ans + '\n'

####