Readline functionality on windows with python 2.7

Question

I need to import the readline functionality in a program written in python. I am currently using version 2.7 and the 3rd party packages I have seen only work up to version 2

Answer 1

Unfortunately, in 2019, pyreadline isn't really developed anymore.

It's far from a "drop-in" replacement, but you could look into Python Prompt Toolkit. It provides tab-completion and then some on just about every platform there is. If you're still using Python 2, you have five months to update but the Prompt Toolkit does appear to support Python 2 with from __future__ import unicode_literals.

Answer 2

I believe pyreadline was designed just for this.

easy_install pyreadline
or:
pip install pyreadline

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyreadline

Also, use the following for forward/reverse compatibility:

try:
  import readline
except ImportError:
  import pyreadline as readline