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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T23:12:56+00:00

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and refreshed my Python environment. I installed

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I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and refreshed my Python environment. I installed Python 2.7 from source. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that Setup.dist has the readline line commented out by default – by default, there is no readline support installed. I’m now using the Python interpreter as a REPL enough that the constant ^[[A and ^[[D are very obnoxious.

Can I add readline support quickly, or do I have to actually recompile Python again? It seems like the sort of thing where there should be a quick, sane way to do it, but I don’t know such a way.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There’s a standalone gnureadline package available, you can install it using setuptools

    $ easy_install readline

    You might also consider using ipython instead.

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