The readline documentation currently says:

> readline.insert_text(string)
>     Insert text into the command line.

But as far as I can tell, readline.insert_text() does something only when called from startup_hook or pre_input_hook.

Here's an example of someone using the module in a way that works:

http://swapoff.org/svn/cly/tags/0.7/cly/interactive.py

Actually, maybe startup_hook doesn't do what it sounds like it does and insert_text() only works from startup_hook.

If this is the case, then the documentation for startup_hook could also be improved:

> The startup_hook function is called with no arguments just before 
> readline prints the first prompt.

Hi Justin, thanks for the report and patch.  Would you like to turn your suggestion into a patch?  Guidelines are at http://www.python.org/dev/patches/

Apparently, the documentation was already changed to reflect the behaviour of startup_hook.

Should this issue be closed?

Documentations of insert_test and set_startup_hook functions are unchanged since 2007. See revision 9e1529bf0442 (warning, huge diff!).

I could get readline.insert_text() to work, ish, without calling startup_hook. The script is attached to this message. Apparently, there is some need to call readline.redisplay() to update what's on screen.

However, I can't really understand what's happening... The script prints "Testing text" only when the input has exactly one character. Also, by calling redisplay() after insert_text(), the string is not on the command line buffer, but already printed on screen. I should take a look on the GNU Readline Library documentation to understand better how it works.

Anyway, I still think the documentation is unclear on these behaviours and should be updated.

In Issue 6953, I updated the documentation to indicate which underlying Readline functions etc are accessed. So perhaps that helps, so the reader knows what function to look up in the Readline documentation.

Other than that, I’m not sure what else to do. It would be more helpful to suggest an improvement, rather than just quoting the existing documentation back.

I agree with Martin. Closing this as 'out of date' for now, but we can reopen if you could provide more information. Thanks!