Subject: Problems trying to use readline or editline ...
From: Skip Montanaro <skip@dolphin.automatrix.com>
To: python-list@cwi.nl
Date: 19 Nov 1995 14:19:56 GMT
X-Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
X-Organization: Automatrix, Inc.


I'm having some trouble with either of the line editing libraries available
to me.  If I build Python with libreadline, I get "staircases" in my
interpreter output:

    >>> s = 1
             >>> a = 3
                      >>> etc.

So I figured I'd give Rich Salz's editline a try.  It seems to be missing a
couple readline functions.  When I link I get:

    myreadline.o: Undefined symbol _rl_insert referenced from text segment
    myreadline.o: Undefined symbol _rl_bind_key referenced from text segment

I'm running on BSD/OS 2.0 with GCC 2.6.3 as the compiler.  My configure line
was

    ./configure --with-readline=/home/dolphin/skip/src/editline \
	--with-dl-dld=/home/dolphin/skip/src/dl-dld,/home/dolphin/skip/src/dld

For editline I tried several things before arriving at something that does
work ... sort of.  First I commented out the tab key binding in Python's
Parser/myreadline.c then had to fiddle with editline.c to get tabs to
insert.  The diffs below seem to work, but have no notion of tab stops (I
like 4-char tab stops).

I'd be grateful if anybody had a solution to the readline staircases or a
better solution for making editline work.

*** editline.c~	Tue Nov 15 08:53:01 1994
--- editline.c	Sun Nov 19 09:15:16 1995
***************
*** 142,145 ****
--- 142,148 ----
  	TTYput('?');
      }
+     else if (c == '\t') {
+         TTYput('\t');
+     }
      else if (ISCTL(c)) {
  	TTYput('^');
***************
*** 1326,1329 ****
--- 1329,1338 ----
  }
  
+ STATIC STATUS
+ tab()
+ {
+     return insert_char('\t');
+ }
+ 
  STATIC KEYMAP	Map[33] = {
      {	CTL('@'),	ring_bell	},
***************
*** 1335,1339 ****
      {	CTL('G'),	ring_bell	},
      {	CTL('H'),	bk_del_char	},
!     {	CTL('I'),	c_complete	},
      {	CTL('J'),	accept_line	},
      {	CTL('K'),	kill_line	},
--- 1344,1348 ----
      {	CTL('G'),	ring_bell	},
      {	CTL('H'),	bk_del_char	},
!     {	CTL('I'),	tab		},
      {	CTL('J'),	accept_line	},
      {	CTL('K'),	kill_line	},
-- 
Skip Montanaro		skip@automatrix.com			  (518)372-5583
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