[Pythonmac-SIG] readline support for OS X Leopard
Boyd Waters
bwaters at nrao.edu
Mon Oct 22 20:55:02 CEST 2007
Interesting.
FWIW I just built IPython against the system python (with libedit,
apparently) and it works fine; I have readline-like command
navigation, history support, etc.
I was not aware of any change from using readline (which is what I
used with 10.4.x)
On Oct 22, 2007, at 12:35 PM, Noah Gift wrote:
> Edward,
>
> Thanks for the information. Do you know of a way to get IPython to
> use edline instead? IPython is growing in popularity for Python
> programmers, and it seems like getting a way forward that works with
> edline makes sense, or maybe I am wrong and people will need to just
> manually install readline themselves.
>
> Noah
>
> On 10/22/07, Edward Moy <emoy at apple.com> wrote:
> On Oct 21, 2007, at 10:51 PM, Noah Gift wrote:
>
>> I have been getting ready for the official leopard release in a few
>> days, and have been a bit worried about readline support. I forgot
>> what I did to get it to work for IPython, which I absolutely cannot
>> live without anymore. Is there a plan for a Leopard binary that
>> fixes readline, or can I help someone prepare some documentation on
>> getting readline working properly. I don't have a lot of time
>> during the next couple of weeks to get into compile hell, but if
>> someone has any easy fix to get readline to work, I would greatly
>> appreciate it.
>
>
> The installed version of python on Leopard will actually have
> readline support turned on by default, but it uses the EditLine
> (libedit) library, not the GNU Readline (due to licensing reasons).
> While functionally equivalent, the command syntax is different.
> From the python(1) man page:
>
>
> INTERACTIVE INPUT EDITING AND HISTORY SUBSTITUTION
> The Python inteterpreter supports editing of the current
> input line and
> history substitution, similar to facilities found in the Korn
> shell and
> the GNU Bash shell. However, rather than being implemented
> using the
> GNU Readline library, this Python interpreter uses the
> BSD EditLine
> library editline(3) with a GNU Readline emulation layer.
>
>
> The readline module provides the access to the EditLine
> library, but
> there are a few major differences compared to a traditional
> implementa-
> tion using the Readline library. The command language
> used in the
> preference files is that of EditLine, as described in
> editrc(5) and not
> that used by the Readline library. This also means
> that the
> parse_and_bind() routines uses EditLine commands. And the
> preference
> file itself is ~/.editrc instead of ~/.inputrc.
>
>
> For example, the rlcompleter module, which defines a
> completion func-
> tion for the readline modules, works correctly with
> the EditLine
> libraries, but needs to be initialized somewhat differently:
>
>
> import rlcompleter
> import readline
> readline.parse_and_bind ("bind ^I rl_complete")
>
>
> For vi mode, one needs:
>
>
> readline.parse_and_bind("bind -v")
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Edward Moy
> Apple Computer, Inc.
> emoy at apple.com
>
>
>
>
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