Oct 30 2007
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How to make readline support work in IPython on Mac OS X Leopard
Many Python programmers use the IPython shell for interactively testing their code.
But if you recently upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard then you may have noticed that a key feature — tab-completion — doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work because IPython uses the GNU Readline library, and Mac OS X doesn’t include that. Instead, OS X ships with a similar library called Editline.
You can make IPython work with EditLine by adding the following lines near the top of your ~/.ipython/ipy_user_conf.py file:
import readline
readline.parse_and_bind ("bind ^I rl_complete")
Note: You must be using a recent version of IPython. You can install the latest version by typing sudo easy_install ipython from the OS X command-line.
(Found in this message thread on the Pythonmac-SIG mailing list)
