python console tab completion not working in windows

Question

running Windows 10

From what I understand python3 has tab completion in the python console already built in but this isn't working for me.

When I hit tab there is no completion:

Im aware there are modules that can do this, but I'd like to use the native feature if it is available to me on windows.

Answer 1

The builtin completion relies on the GNU readline library.

You may be able to get completion working by installing the python version ( pyreadline ) of this package on Windows.

python -m pip install pyreadline

Answer 2

The original pyreadline is no longer maintained and doesn't work on newer versions of Python (>=3.10). Installing pyreadline3 works:

python -m pip install pyreadline3

Answer 3

I'd discourage use of pyreadline where possible, as it was written to support IPython, and stopped active development when IPython stopped using readline / pyreadline to support their REPL.

As an alternative, I'd suggest IPython itself; it implements their own tab-completion features (using prompt_toolkit as of 5.0) that work in a terminal agnostic fashion. If you install and use ipython , you'll get tab completion and the host of other features it provides to improve the interactive experience. Using the py.exe manager application bundled with modern Python, install it for Python 3 (in an admin elevated command prompt if Python installed for all users) with:

py -3 -mpip install ipython

then to run it:

py -3 -mIPython

If you don't want the whole of ipython just to get these features, the prompt_toolkit folks do provide a minimalist ptpython REPL that is basically "Python with a REPL provided by prompt_toolkit " without all the other IPython bells and whistles.

Answer 4

Installing following packages should fix this on both python CLI and pyspark shell.

pip install pyreadline
pip install ipython

Answer 5

For Windows consider to use free Visual Studio Community as Python IDE - it has all autocomplete features out of the box for Python shell (Python Interactive Window) you will likely need: for modules, methods, etc.

In below example I've imported my DiveIntoPython.py , once I did it, the name of the module is now into autocomplete suggestions.

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If you want to add your own modules paths automatically you should utilize built-in site module as described by odjo: https://stackoverflow.com/a/59411635/2170898 -> just create sitecustomize.py file inside site.USER_SITE dir with this content (don't forget to change actual path):

import site
site.addsitedir(r'C:\My_Projects')