[Pythonmac-SIG] readline space problem?

Bob Ippolito bob at redivi.com
Fri Apr 1 17:17:01 CEST 2005


On Apr 1, 2005, at 9:40, John Hunter wrote:

>
> In ipython, which uses readline for tab completion in the shell, on my
> powerbook when I do
>
>>>> cd pyth<TAB>
>
> The completer generates
>
>>>> cd python _
>
>
> where the _ is a placeholder for where the cursor ends up.  When
> completing on a long path, this is annoying, because I have to
> backspace out all those extras spaces.
>
> I brought this up on the ipython list and Fernando Perez and I spent
> some time trying to hunt it down.  In the end, he was firmly convinced
> that this was a platform specific readline problem.  I get this
> behavior in both the X11 xterm and the OS X Terminal.
>
> I'm have readline-2.3-binary and readline-2.3.source listed in my
> Python Install Manager.
>
> Someone on the ipython list suggested
>
>     From: Eric Brown <eric.brown at propel.com>
>     Subject: Re: [IPython-user] OSX tab completion
>     To: Fernando Perez <Fernando.Perez at colorado.edu>
>     Cc: ipython-user at scipy.net
>     Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 12:20:44 -0800
>
>     Fink's python and underlying readline do the right thing.
>
>     There is also something (I can't remember what) to turn on os x's
>     shipping readline to do the right thing. Search google. There is 
> one
>     rather difficult solution - rebuilding readline - and another 
> which is
>     just to change some configuration if I remember correctly.
>
>
> Does this ring a bell with anyone?  Any ideas on how to fix this
> little annoyance?

Mac OS X does not ship with readline.  If you downloaded readline from 
PackageManager, it's old and might have bugs.  The one at 
http://pythonmac.org/packages/ should link in the latest version of 
readline as per darwinports when I built it (which is still most 
recent): 5.0.005.

-bob



More information about the Pythonmac-SIG mailing list