Python readline interface focusing on completion
Project description
Introduction
The rl package aims to provide a full implementation of the GNU Readline Custom Completer interface.
Package Contents
rl exports the following components:
- completer
Interface to the readline completer. Used to configure the completion aspects of readline.
- completion
Interface to the active readline completion. Used to interact with readline when a completion is in progress.
- history
Interface to the readline history. Used to read and write history files and to manipulate history entries.
- readline
The readline interface module. Contains everything known from the standard library plus extensions specific to the rl package. The completer, completion, and history interfaces make use of this module, and you should rarely need to interact with it directly.
- generator
A factory turning any callable into a completion entry function that can be handed to readline.
- print_exc
A decorator printing exceptions to stderr. Useful when writing Python completions and hooks, as exceptions occurring there are usually swallowed by the in-between C code.
For further details, please refer to the API Documentation.
Example Code
The code below implements system command completion similar to bash:
import os
from rl import completer
from rl import generator
def complete(text):
# Return executables matching 'text'
for dir in os.environ.get('PATH').split(':'):
dir = os.path.expanduser(dir)
if os.path.isdir(dir):
for name in os.listdir(dir):
if name.startswith(text):
if os.access(os.path.join(dir, name), os.R_OK|os.X_OK):
yield name
def main():
# Set the completion function
completer.completer = generator(complete)
# Enable TAB completion
completer.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')
command = raw_input('command: ')
print 'You typed:', command
See the examples subdirectory of the package for more.
Installation
rl has been tested with GNU Readline versions 5 and 6.
On Linux, install libreadline5-dev (or equivalent) before attempting to build rl. On Mac OS X, you need a Python built with MacPorts or Fink, as the system Python is linked to the BSD editline library and not GNU readline.
rl requires distribute >= 0.6.3. If you have not upgraded from setuptools yet, type:
/path/to/easy_install distribute
Then type:
/path/to/easy_install rl
and watch the console. When it reads:
Finished processing dependencies for rl
you are done and rl is ready to use.
Changelog
1.0a1 - 2009-10-04
Initial release.
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.
