This patch attempts to fix raw_input so it
can be interrupted by signals.  In the process
it allows SIGINT handling to be honored by
raw_input.  (right now SIGINT always interrupts
regardless of any installed handlers)

Effects:
Signals are handled with their installed handlers
and when those handlers raise exceptions those
exceptions are raised by raw_input.  If an
exception is not raised, raw_input continues
collecting input as if nothing had happened.
This can be problematic if the signal causes
output to appear on the screen, messing up
the input line, or if someone using the
readline module was in the middle of a
complex operation, like a reverse search,
in which case that operation will be
cancelled.  It would be easy to instead
print a message ("Signal Interruption")
and continue input on a new line for the
readline library, but this couldn't happen
in myreadline.c as we can't retrieve the
partially entered input.

Backwards compatibility:
This patch requires the readline handler
(either call_readline or PyOS_StdioReadline
generally) to be called while holding the
global interpreter lock.  It is then
responsible for releasing the GIL before doing
blocking input. This will cause problems
for anyone who has written an extension
that installs a custom readline handler.
In python code, anyone using signals and
expecting raw_input not to be interrupted
by them will have problems (but this seems
unlikely).

Set as superseder of #685846 and #1113.

ajaksu2 has uploaded a file called "test.py" that seems to have nothing 
to do with this issue, unless I'm misunderstanding something.  I don't 
see any call to readline in the uploaded file at all.  Perhaps the file 
you meant to upload, was the one from issue 1113?
http://bugs.python.org/file8392/test.py

Oops, sorry! I should know better than to name scripts test.py: the
upload failed and when I realized that (after some time), test.py was
already something else.

Thanks for catching this instance of PEBKAC, Michael :)

Can this still be reproduced on an appropriate box or can it be closed or what?

I seems this has been fixed already, at least on my python 2.7 on linux.

Wow, you wait 3/4 of a decade or so and the status of these bugs does tend to change on you.  I'm not sure it's fixed, but it is different.  Here's a test script for you:

import readline
import signal
def handle(a,b):
   print "received signal"
signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, handle)
signal.alarm(5)
name = raw_input('Please enter your name within 5 seconds: ')
print name

The behavior of this script as is, since at least python 2.5 or so, is after 5 seconds to run the signal handler and then keep waiting for input (assuming you've got readline on your box of course).  I like this behavior, everything seems good to me so far.

Now comment out the "import readline", and suddenly you're getting an EOFError after the signal handler runs normally.  Still better than it used to be in 2003, but I'm not sure if this inconsistency is okay or not.

Now let's throw another wrench in the system.  Raise an exception in the signal handler.  Suddenly both are consistent again with and without readline, both raising the exception from the signal handler.  Sounds good to me.

So I guess someone has to decide, is this EOFError a new bug?  Or is this inconsistency acceptable and/or too hard to fix?  I haven't looked at the code in forever, so I can't speak for how hard it would be to fix.

Can someone please comment on msg114316 as I'm out of my depth here, thanks.

(Noted in passing: Issue9867 may be relevant here.)