diff -r ce6a6cc3765d Lib/test/test_readline.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_readline.py	Tue Dec 20 22:52:33 2016 +0800
+++ b/Lib/test/test_readline.py	Tue Dec 20 20:27:28 2016 +0100
@@ -141,6 +141,10 @@
             readline.add_history("\xEB\xEF")
         except UnicodeEncodeError as err:
             self.skipTest("Locale cannot encode test data: " + format(err))
+        output = run_pty(None,
+                 'import sys; print("\xEB"); sys.exit()\r'.encode())
+        if output.decode().strip('\r\n')[-1] != '\xEB':
+            self.skipTest('readline does not handle multi bytes characters')
 
         script = r"""import readline
 
@@ -215,7 +219,10 @@
     pty = import_module('pty')
     output = bytearray()
     [master, slave] = pty.openpty()
-    args = (sys.executable, '-c', script)
+    if script:
+        args = (sys.executable, '-c', script)
+    else:
+        args = (sys.executable, '-q')
     proc = subprocess.Popen(args, stdin=slave, stdout=slave, stderr=slave)
     os.close(slave)
     with ExitStack() as cleanup: