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pythonconsole

Enabling console features with code.interact

If I start a new Python interactive session from the command line, some console features such as using the arrow keys to access a previous command, etc. are present.
If instead, however, I use code.interact() to start an interactive session from inside a larger script, the escape sequences aren't properly handled - e.g. pressing the ⮹ key prints ^[[A instead of displaying the previous command. How do I enable this feature?

Solution

  • You can use readline module to get arrow keys working

    import code
import readline
import rlcompleter
           
vars = globals()
vars.update(locals())
                                              
readline.set_completer(rlcompleter.Completer(vars).complete)
readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
code.InteractiveConsole(vars).interact()