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prompt_toolkitis a library for building powerful interactive command line applications in Python.

Read thedocumentation on readthedocs.

ptpython is an interactivePython Shell, build on top ofprompt_toolkit.

More examples

prompt_toolkit could be a replacement forGNU readline, but it can be muchmore than that.

Some features:

• Pure Python.
• Syntax highlighting of the input while typing. (For instance, with a Pygments lexer.)
• Multi-line input editing.
• Advanced code completion.
• Both Emacs and Vi key bindings. (Similar to readline.)
• Even some advanced Vi functionality, like named registers and digraphs.
• Reverse and forward incremental search.
• Works well with Unicode double width characters. (Chinese input.)
• Selecting text for copy/paste. (Both Emacs and Vi style.)
• Support forbracketed paste.
• Mouse support for cursor positioning and scrolling.
• Auto suggestions. (Likefish shell.)
• Multiple input buffers.
• No global state.
• Lightweight, the only dependencies are Pygments and wcwidth.
• Runs on Linux, OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Windows systems.
• And much more...

Feel free to create tickets for bugs and feature requests, and create pullrequests if you have nice patches that you would like to share with others.

pip install prompt_toolkit

For Conda, do:

conda install -c https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge prompt_toolkit

prompt_toolkit is cross platform, and everything that you build on topshould run fine on both Unix and Windows systems. Windows support is best onrecent Windows 10 builds, for which the command line window supports vt100escape sequences. (If not supported, we fall back to using Win32 APIs for colorand cursor movements).

It's worth noting that the implementation is a "best effort of what ispossible". Both Unix and Windows terminals have their limitations. But ingeneral, the Unix experience will still be a little better.

The most simple example of the library would look like this:

fromprompt_toolkitimportpromptif__name__=='__main__':answer=prompt('Give me some input: ')print('You said: %s'%answer)

For more complex examples, have a look in theexamples directory. Allexamples are chosen to demonstrate only one thing. Also, don't be afraid tolook at the source code. The implementation of theprompt function could bea good start.

The source code ofprompt_toolkit should bereadable,concise andefficient. We prefer short functions focusing each on one task and for whichthe input and output types are clearly specified. We mostly prefer compositionover inheritance, because inheritance can result in too much functionality inthe same object. We prefer immutable objects where possible (objects don'tchange after initialization). Reusability is important. We absolutely refrainfrom having a changing global state, it should be possible to have multipleindependent instances of the same code in the same process. The architectureshould be layered: the lower levels operate on primitive operations and datastructures giving -- when correctly combined -- all the possible flexibility;while at the higher level, there should be a simpler API, ready-to-use andsufficient for most use cases. Thinking about algorithms and efficiency isimportant, but avoid premature optimization.

• Pygments: Syntax highlighter.
• wcwidth: Determine columns needed for a wide characters.