Question

I wrote a python script and have been running it in terminal on Mac OS X snow leopard using python2.6. I used raw_input() to import text in several places, but I seem to reach a limit where it will no longer accept any more characters.

Is this a limit in python raw_input() or is this something to do with Terminal or Mac OSX?

Is there a better way to have the user input larger amounts of text in python?

Answer 1

I’d say it’s a limitation/bug with the OSX Terminal – try running the script with input via IDLE and see whether you still hit the same problem.

As for better ways of dealing with large input – it totally depends on your requirements but some ways could be:

• Import text from a file
• Create some kind of GUI/frontend to handle text input via more user friendly controls