Pyreadline

A python implementation of GNU readline

Pyreadline is a package inspired by GNU readline which aims to improve the command line editing experience. In most UNIX based pythons GNU readline is available and used by python but on windows this is not the case. A readline like python library can also be useful when implementing commandline like interfaces in GUIs. The use of pyreadline for anything but the windows console is still under development.

The pyreadline module supports Python versions 2.6, 2.7, and >3.2.

Conflicts

Unfortunately the module rlcompleter, the module that provides tab completion, imports readline which means there must be an alias from readline to pyreadline for things to work properly. This means pyreadline install a file under the name readline.py in site-packages containing:

# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
#this file is needed in site-packages to emulate readline
#necessary for rlcompleter since it relies on the existance
#of a readline module
from __future__ import print_function, unicode_literals, absolute_import
from pyreadline.rlmain import Readline

__all__ = [ 'parse_and_bind',
            'get_line_buffer',
            'insert_text',
            'clear_history',
            'read_init_file',
            'read_history_file',
            'write_history_file',
            'get_current_history_length',
            'get_history_length',
            'get_history_item',
            'set_history_length',
            'set_startup_hook',
            'set_pre_input_hook',
            'set_completer',
            'get_completer',
            'get_begidx',
            'get_endidx',
            'set_completer_delims',
            'get_completer_delims',
            'add_history',
            'callback_handler_install',
            'callback_handler_remove',
            'callback_read_char',] #Some other objects are added below


# create a Readline object to contain the state
rl = Readline()

if rl.disable_readline:
    def dummy(completer=""):
        pass
    for funk in __all__:
        globals()[funk] = dummy
else:
    def GetOutputFile():
        '''Return the console object used by readline so that it can be used for printing in color.'''
        return rl.console
    __all__.append("GetOutputFile")

    import pyreadline.console as console

    # make these available so this looks like the python readline module
    read_init_file = rl.read_init_file
    parse_and_bind = rl.parse_and_bind
    clear_history = rl.clear_history
    add_history = rl.add_history
    insert_text = rl.insert_text

    write_history_file = rl.write_history_file
    read_history_file = rl.read_history_file

    get_completer_delims = rl.get_completer_delims
    get_current_history_length = rl.get_current_history_length
    get_history_length = rl.get_history_length
    get_history_item = rl.get_history_item
    get_line_buffer = rl.get_line_buffer
    set_completer = rl.set_completer
    get_completer = rl.get_completer
    get_begidx = rl.get_begidx
    get_endidx = rl.get_endidx

    set_completer_delims = rl.set_completer_delims
    set_history_length = rl.set_history_length
    set_pre_input_hook = rl.set_pre_input_hook
    set_startup_hook = rl.set_startup_hook

    callback_handler_install=rl.callback_handler_install
    callback_handler_remove=rl.callback_handler_remove
    callback_read_char=rl.callback_read_char

    console.install_readline(rl.readline)

__all__.append("rl")

History

The pyreadline package is based on the ctypes based UNC readline package by Gary Bishop.