rl 1.0a2

Python readline interface focusing on completion

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.

Repository Access

rl development is hosted on github.

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

1.0a2 - 2009-10-08

• Make the generator factory work for all types of callables. [stefan]

• Improve examples. [stefan]

1.0a1 - 2009-10-04

• Initial release.