The documentation of the readline module refers to readline initialization files, but does not give any information about their format or the available commands. I realize that this is a standard part of environments that support readline, not anything specific to Python, but as long as the module documentations mentions the init file it should give a link to documentation about it.

Can you suggest a specific link and a specific location where to add it?

On Aug 5, 2010, at 3:48 PM, Terry J. Reedy wrote:

> 
> Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> added the comment:
> 
> Can you suggest a specific link and a specific location where to add it?

I would add a sentence to the first paragraph of the readline doc:

	Readline keybindings may be configured via an initialization file, typically .inputrc in your home directory; see 
http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/readline.html#SEC9 (or http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Readline-Init-File.html) for information about the format and allowable constructs of that file and the capabilities of the readline library in general.

I did a few quick tests and convinced myself that the module's C code's call to rl_initialize actually reads .inputrc (or the value of the environment variable INPUTRC if that is set).

> 
> ----------
> assignee: georg.brandl -> docs@python
> nosy: +docs@python, terry.reedy
> versions:  -Python 2.6
> 
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue8491>
> _______________________________________

Ping. I just noticed that this is still unresolved in the Python 3.3 docs. This should be closed, with or without my suggested change.

Thanks for the patch. I left a couple review comments.

Also, this new paragraph should be outside the “Note” box, which is specifically about libedit aka Editline, not Gnu Readline.

Revised patch following Martin Panter's review comments.

New changeset e981a4273cf6 by Martin Panter in branch '2.7':
Issue #8491: Add link to Gnu Readline configuration documentation
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/e981a4273cf6

New changeset 5bbb021450d7 by Martin Panter in branch '3.5':
Issue #8491: Add link to Gnu Readline configuration documentation
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5bbb021450d7

New changeset 5b904920c2d1 by Martin Panter in branch 'default':
Issue #8491: Merge readline doc from 3.5
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5b904920c2d1

For the record, I removed some trailing spaces and reworded the link in the comitted version.