I really love python. It’s a great language (fyi it’s one of the languages that google uses — they are java, python, c and c++) and has a powerful console.
But, it misses an great point: autocomplete. (A think that ruby’s console has)
So, searching on the internet i found this site that show how to do it:
First, create a new environment variable called PYTHONSTARTUP pointing to a file “$HOME/.pystartup” — you can do that using the command export PYTHONSTARTUP=”$HOME/.pystartup. (You can add the command to your .bashrc, so you don’t need to type everytime you startup a console)
Then you create the file .pystartup and add the same content to it:
# Add auto-completion and a stored history file of commands to your Python # interactive interpreter. Requires Python 2.0+, readline. Autocomplete is # bound to the Esc key by default (you can change it - see readline docs). # # Store the file in ~/.pystartup, and set an environment variable to point # to it, e.g. "export PYTHONSTARTUP=/max/home/itamar/.pystartup" in bash. # # Note that PYTHONSTARTUP does *not* expand "~", so you have to put in the # full path to your home directory. import atexit import os import readline import rlcompleter historyPath = os.path.expanduser("~/.pyhistory") historyTmp = os.path.expanduser("~/.pyhisttmp.py") endMarkerStr= "# # # histDUMP # # #" saveMacro= "import readline; readline.write_history_file('"+historyTmp+"'); \ print '####>>>>>>>>>>'; print ''.join(filter(lambda lineP: \ not lineP.strip().endswith('"+endMarkerStr+"'), \ open('"+historyTmp+"').readlines())[:])+'####<<<<<<<<<<'"+endMarkerStr readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete') readline.parse_and_bind('\C-w: "'+saveMacro+'"') def save_history(historyPath=historyPath, endMarkerStr=endMarkerStr): import readline readline.write_history_file(historyPath) # Now filter out those line containing the saveMacro lines= filter(lambda lineP, endMarkerStr=endMarkerStr: not lineP.strip().endswith(endMarkerStr), open(historyPath).readlines()) open(historyPath, 'w+').write(''.join(lines)) if os.path.exists(historyPath): readline.read_history_file(maxhistoryPath) atexit.register(save_history) del os, atexit, readline, rlcompleter, save_history, historyPath del historyTmp, endMarkerStr, saveMacro
Now you can start your python console typing python (Duh!) and try to do some autocomplete like:
a = “Fernando”
a.
a.is
a.islo
Enjoy!
What about iPython? http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/
You know there is IPython rite?
Even if PYTHONSTARTUP does not expand “~”, you can use $HOME in your .bashrc script. That way you are not forced to use the full path.
Thanks for the trick 🙂
Hello, that’s a great script to get autocompletion working.
I found a mistake in that script: the variable “maxhistoryPath” should be called “historyPath”
That’s all! Thanks!
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