rlcompleter — Completion function for GNU readline¶

Source code:Lib/rlcompleter.py

Therlcompleter module defines a completion function suitable to bepassed toset_completer() in thereadline module.

When this module is imported on a Unix platform with thereadline moduleavailable, an instance of theCompleter class is automatically createdand itscomplete() method is set as thereadline completer. The method providescompletion of valid Pythonidentifiers and keywords.

Example:

>>>importrlcompleter>>>importreadline>>>readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")>>>readline.<TABPRESSED>readline.__doc__          readline.get_line_buffer(  readline.read_init_file(readline.__file__         readline.insert_text(      readline.set_completer(readline.__name__         readline.parse_and_bind(>>>readline.

Therlcompleter module is designed for use with Python’sinteractive mode. Unless Python is run with the-S option, the module is automatically imported and configured(seeReadline configuration).

On platforms withoutreadline, theCompleter class defined bythis module can still be used for custom purposes.

classrlcompleter.Completer¶

Completer objects have the following method:

complete(text,state)¶

Return the next possible completion fortext.

When called by thereadline module, this method is calledsuccessively withstate==0,1,2,... until the method returnsNone.

If called fortext that doesn’t include a period character ('.'), it willcomplete from names currently defined in__main__,builtins andkeywords (as defined by thekeyword module).

If called for a dotted name, it will try to evaluate anything without obviousside-effects (functions will not be evaluated, but it can generate calls to__getattr__()) up to the last part, and find matches for therest via thedir() function. Any exception raised during theevaluation of the expression is caught, silenced andNone isreturned.