Enabling tab completion in OS X Python interactive interpreter

Python is awesome, and so is its native interactive interpreter. I discovered today that it can even provide autocompletion using a very simple trick:

Append this to your ~/.profile:

export PYTHONSTARTUP=$HOME/.pythonrc.py

And in a new ~/.pythonrc.py file:

try:
    import readline
except ImportError:
    print("Module readline not available.")
else:
    import rlcompleter
    readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")

Source it:

$ source ~/.profile

Magic? Well if like me you’re running Mac OS X, it won’t work, no autocompletion, nada. OS X seems to ship with a very poor (and obsolete) python, and no readline implementation — which is mandatory to achieve our purpose.

So while being at tweaking up my python setup, let me get rid of the Apple stuff and install a fresh version of python using Homebrew, a great package manager for OSX:

$ brew install readline python

Tadaa! Now you get autocompletion, plus a shiny python 2.7.1 (you could also install latest python3 running brew install python3 by the way).

As a side note, if you work with virtualenvs like me, creating a new env will now involve specifying which python you want to use:

$ mkvirtualenv -p /usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.1/bin/python \
    --no-site-packages `pwd`/env

That’s all folks.