[Python-Dev] Incorrect documentation of the raw_input built-in function (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Jan 24 21:09:12 CET 2008

On Jan 24, 2008 11:41 AM, Mike Kent <mike.kent at sage.com> wrote:

<skip pobox.com> writes:

> > > Isaac> Have people actually verified that the prompt is really sent to > Isaac> stderr right now by using 2>/dev/null to attempt to suppress it? > > Good point. On my machine at work (Solaris), Python 2.4 seems to send its > rawinput prompt to stdout, not stderr: > > > Same for 2.6a0 on my Mac at home. Mike, are you sure about it prompting to > stderr? If so, what's your setup? > > Skip Skip, Guido and others: Interesting point about whether GNU readline is installed. My setup is RedHat Linux, with Python 2.5 that I built and installed myself. GNU readline is not, in fact, installed. If you look at Python2.5/Parser/myreadline.c, function PyOSStdioReadline, line 125, you will see that prompt output is being sent to stderr. As best as my Python-fu can determine, this is the code used to output a rawinput prompt (thanks again to Gabriel Genellina for pointing me in the right direction.) It's entirely likely that the difference in what I am seeing and what you guys are seeing is caused by my not having GNU readline installed. Nevertheless, the behavior without it seems wrong, and is certainly different from the documentation.

Agreed.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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