prompt_toolkit ignores .inputrc

[ivanov]

For as long as IPython used readline, users' .inputrc settings were respected at the input prompt.

This does not appear to be the case - as prompt_toolkit does not currently support .inputrc.

Can we add a note about this? I actually don't see anything in what's new for 5.x - only 4.x notes in there.

vi users will want to turn this off, or at least know how to turn on prompt_toolkit's vi mode (I think it has one?).

I get the impression that @takluyver @jonathanslenders seem to be closest to this.

[jonathanslenders]

Hi all,

prompt-toolkit does not process .inputrc yet. Mainly because there was no obvious 1-to-1 mapping of the readline and the prompt-toolkit functionality. Especially because the readline configuration uses vt100 escape codes to define key bindings. This is for historical reasons and not platform independent.

However, detecting whether the editing-mode is vi (set editing-mode vi), or whether the user has interest in history-search-backward (e.g.:"\e[A":history-search-backward) is not going to be difficult.

The crash guys are doing this: https://github.com/crate/crash/blob/d8e49c0aec8f1c70c49fe56e7f3e967bde1f44a3/src/crate/crash/command.py#L415
See also: prompt-toolkit/python-prompt-toolkit#56

Jonathan

[takluyver]

Hi Paul! I wondered when we'd be seeing you after this change ;-). You're right, we should definitely mention it in the release notes.

I don't think we should try to do any interpretation of inputrc: I'd rather be able to say unambiguously 'no, that no longer affects input in IPython, here are the new ways to configure things', rather than dealing with a situation where some entries in there work and others don't.

For reference, the config option to enable vi mode is now TerminalInteractiveShell.vi_mode (which is a boolean).

[Carreau]

Marking as 5.0 to, at least, document it.

[Carreau]

documented in #9497, bumbing to 6.0 to reevaluate.

[MarkLodato]

So, how do you configure "\e[A":history-search-backward? And how do you get up arrow to be normal up arrow and not history search? In old versions I could do

c.TerminalInteractiveShell.readline_parse_and_bind = ['tab: complete']

but that no longer works.

[takluyver]

We should make history search (the behaviour of the up and down arrows) configurable - I've just opened #9961 for that.

For adding custom shortcuts, see the docs. Unfortunately at present you have to go digging in the prompt_toolkit code to find/write a function that does what you want. The normal behaviour of the up-arrow key is defined here and here.

[wavexx]

prompt-toolkit introduces several editing regressions compared to readline :/. For example, forward/backward-word do not work anymore in urxvt, and there's no way to configure the different escape sequences without editing the internal bindings.

[takluyver]

Forward/backward word works OK in my terminal; I don't see urxvt in my repos to test with.

[wavexx]

On Wed, Nov 09 2016, Thomas Kluyver wrote:

Forward/backward word works OK in my terminal; I don't see urxvt in my repos to test with.

On debian it's rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode-*.

See prompt-toolkit/python-prompt-toolkit#415

[MarkLodato]

I agree with @wavexx. I have stopped using the new version of IPython because the prompt is so much worse. Although readline is not perfect, it uses my standard ~/.inputrc and I'm happy. The new version of IPython is unusable because of prompt-toolkit. If I were you, I'd revert that change.