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fancycompleter: colorful Python TAB completion
==============================================

What is is?
-----------

`fancycompleter` is a module to improve your experience in Python by
adding TAB completion to the interactive prompt. It is an extension of
the stdlib\'s
[rlcompleter](http://docs.python.org/library/rlcompleter.html) module.

Its best feature is that the completions are displayed in different
colors, depending on their type:

![image](http://bitbucket.org/antocuni/fancycompleter/raw/5bf506e05ce7/screenshot.png)

In the image above, strings are shown in green, functions in blue,
integers and boolean in yellows, `None` in gray, types and classes in
fuchsia. Everything else is plain white.

`fancycompleter` is compatible with Python 3. However, by default colors
don\'t work on Python 3, see the section [How do I get
colors?](#how-do-i-get-colors) for details.

Other features
--------------

-   To save space on screen, `fancycompleter` only shows the characters
    "after the dot". By contrast, in the example above `rlcompleter`
    shows everything prepended by `"sys."`.
-   If we press `<TAB>` at the beginning of the line, a real tab
    character is inserted, instead of trying to complete. This is useful
    when typing function bodies or multi-line statements at the prompt.
-   Unlike `rlcompleter`, `fancycompleter` **does** complete expressions
    containing dictionary or list indexing. For example,
    `mydict['foo'].<TAB>` works (assuming that `mydict` is a dictionary
    and that it contains the key `'foo'`, of course :-)).
-   Starting from Python 2.6, if the completed name is a callable,
    `rlcompleter` automatically adds an open parenthesis `(`. This is
    annoying in case we do not want to really call it, so
    `fancycompleter` disable this behaviour.

Installation
------------

First, install the module with `pip` or `easy_install`:

$ pip install fancycompleter

Then, at the Python interactive prompt:

>>> import fancycompleter
    >>> fancycompleter.interact(persist_history=True)
    >>>

If you want to enable `fancycompleter` automatically at startup, you can
add those two lines at the end of your
[PYTHONSTARTUP](http://docs.python.org/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONSTARTUP)
script.

If you do **not** have a `PYTHONSTARTUP` script, the
following command will create one for you in `~/python_startup.py`:

$ python -m fancycompleter install

On Windows, `install` automatically sets the `PYTHONSTARTUP` environment
variable. On other systems, you need to add the proper command in
`~/.bashrc` or equivalent.

**Note**: depending on your particular system, `interact` might need to
play dirty tricks in order to display colors, although everything should
"just work". In particular, the call to `interact` should be the last
line in the startup file, else the next lines might not be executed. See
section [What is really going on?](#what-is-really-going-on) for
details.

How do I get colors?
--------------------

If you are using **PyPy**, you can stop reading now, as `fancycompleter`
will work out of the box.

If you are using **CPython on Linux/OSX** and you installed
`fancycompleter` with `pip` or `easy_install`, they automatically
installed `pyrepl` as a requirement, and you should also get colors out
of the box. If for some reason you don\'t want to use `pyrepl`, you
should keep on reading.

By default, in CPython line input and TAB completion are handled by [GNU
readline](http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html) (at least
on Linux). However, `readline` explicitly strips escape sequences from
the completions, so completions with colors are not displayed correctly.

There are two ways to solve it:

> -   (suggested) don\'t use `readline` at all and rely on
>     [pyrepl](http://codespeak.net/pyrepl/)
> -   use a patched version of `readline` to allow colors

By default, `fancycompleter` tries to use `pyrepl` if it finds it. To
get colors you need a recent version, \>= 0.8.2.

Starting from version 0.6.1, `fancycompleter` works also on **Windows**,
relying on [pyreadline](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyreadline). At the
moment of writing, the latest version of `pyreadline` is 2.1, which does
**not** support colored completions; here is the [pull
request](https://github.com/pyreadline/pyreadline/pull/48) which adds
support for them. To enable colors, you can install `pyreadline` from
[this fork](https://github.com/antocuni/pyreadline) using the following
command:

pip install --upgrade https://github.com/antocuni/pyreadline/tarball/master

If you are using **Python 3**, `pyrepl` does not work, and thus is not
installed. Your only option to get colors is to use a patched
`readline`, as explained below.

I really want to use readline
-----------------------------

This method is not really recommended, but if you really want, you can
use use a patched readline: you can find the patches in the `misc/`
directory:

> -   for
>     [readline-5.2](http://bitbucket.org/antocuni/fancycompleter/src/tip/misc/readline-escape-5.2.patch)
> -   for
>     [readline-6.0](http://bitbucket.org/antocuni/fancycompleter/src/tip/misc/readline-escape-6.0.patch)

You can also try one of the following precompiled versions, which has
been tested on Ubuntu 10.10: remember to put them in a place where the
linker can find them, e.g. by setting `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`:

> -   readline-6.0 for
>     [32-bit](http://bitbucket.org/antocuni/fancycompleter/src/tip/misc/libreadline.so.6-32bit)
> -   readline-6.0 for
>     [64-bit](http://bitbucket.org/antocuni/fancycompleter/src/tip/misc/libreadline.so.6-64bit)

Once it is installed, you should double-check that you can find it, e.g.
by running `ldd` on Python\'s `readline.so` module:

$ ldd /usr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload/readline.so | grep readline
            libreadline.so.6 => /home/antocuni/local/32/lib/libreadline.so.6 (0x00ee7000)

Finally, you need to force `fancycompleter` to use colors, since by
default, it uses colors only with `pyrepl`: you can do it by placing a
custom config file in `~/.fancycompleterrc.py`. An example config file
is
[here](http://bitbucket.org/antocuni/fancycompleter/src/tip/misc/fancycompleterrc.py)
(remind that you need to put a dot in front of the filename!).

Customization
-------------

To customize the configuration of fancycompleter, you need to put a file
named `.fancycompleterrc.py` in your home directory. The file must
contain a class named `Config` inheriting from `DefaultConfig` and
overridding the desired values.

What is really going on?
------------------------

The default and preferred way to get colors is to use `pyrepl`. However,
there is no way to tell CPython to use `pyrepl` instead of the built-in
readline at the interactive prompt: this means that even if we install
our completer inside pyrepl\'s readline library, the interactive prompt
won\'t see it.

The issue is simply solved by avoiding to use the built-in prompt:
instead, we use a pure Python replacement based on
[code.InteractiveConsole](http://docs.python.org/library/code.html#code.InteractiveConsole).
This brings us also some niceties, such as the ability to do multi-line
editing of the history.

The console is automatically run by `fancycompleter.interact()`,
followed by `sys.exit()`: this way, if we execute it from the script in
`PYTHONSTARTUP`, the interpreter exits as soon as we finish the use the
prompt (e.g. by pressing CTRL-D, or by calling `quit()`). This way, we
avoid to enter the built-in prompt and we get a behaviour which closely
resembles the default one. This is why in this configuration lines after
`fancycompleter.interact()` might not be run.

Note that if we are using `readline` instead of `pyrepl`, the trick is
not needed and thus `interact()` will simply returns, letting the
built-in prompt to show up. The same is true if we are running PyPy, as
its built-in prompt is based on pyrepl anyway.

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