One feature I really miss in Pythons interactive shell is tab autocompletion. Thanks to blog.e-shell.org I know how to get it:
>>> import rlcompleter, readline
>>> readline.parse_and_bind('tab:complete')
>>> smtplib.
smtplib.CRLF smtplib.__getattribute__(
smtplib.LMTP smtplib.__hash__(
smtplib.LMTP_PORT smtplib.__init__(
smtplib.OLDSTYLE_AUTH smtplib.__name__
smtplib.SMTP smtplib.__new__(
smtplib.SMTPAuthenticationError( smtplib.__package__
smtplib.SMTPConnectError( smtplib.__reduce__(
smtplib.SMTPDataError( smtplib.__reduce_ex__(
smtplib.SMTPException( smtplib.__repr__(
smtplib.SMTPHeloError( smtplib.__setattr__(
smtplib.SMTPRecipientsRefused( smtplib.__sizeof__(
smtplib.SMTPResponseException( smtplib.__str__(
smtplib.SMTPSenderRefused( smtplib.__subclasshook__(
smtplib.SMTPServerDisconnected( smtplib._addr_only(
smtplib.SMTP_PORT smtplib._have_ssl
smtplib.SMTP_SSL smtplib.base64
smtplib.SMTP_SSL_PORT smtplib.email
smtplib.SSLFakeFile smtplib.encode_base64(
smtplib.__all__ smtplib.hmac
smtplib.__class__( smtplib.quoteaddr(
smtplib.__delattr__( smtplib.quotedata(
smtplib.__dict__ smtplib.re
smtplib.__doc__ smtplib.socket
smtplib.__file__ smtplib.ssl
smtplib.__format__( smtplib.stderr
Now if you want to always have that, you can get it by editing your
~/.pythonrc:
import rlcompleter, readline
readline.parse_and_bind('tab:complete')
You also have to make sure that the environment variable PYTHONSTARTUP is set to
~/.pythonrc. In my case, I had to add the line export PYTHONSTARTUP=~/.pythonrc
to ~/.zshrc.
I have also seen that there is another, "more powerful", Python shell called ipython. However, I don't understand how this shell supports autocompletion (see How does ipython3 import autocomplete work?).