indent with 'tab' button in python commandline

Question

hi everyone :) my problem is, up until now, i have exclusively used tabs to indent python, as i find it easier than spaces, but for no reason i know, python interactive prompt, the basic python.exe one, suddenly refuses to accept the tab button, all it does is flash the cursor. all i can think of is that my computer in suddenly treading the window like any other, using tab to cycle input things, in this case the single one. also, before now, i could use the up button to reach previously typed code, the if i submit that line with no changes, use the down button to access the line that came after it, but now up works, but as if i had changed the line, eg moves me back to the "bottom" of the list of inputs, so down doesn't work.... my question simply is: how do i get my good old tab and down button to work like i want them to again? :( thanks xxx

Answer 1

I recently observed this behavior too, on Windows, using cmd.exe. It also happens with Console2 - an alternate shell I sometimes use.

Though I do always use spaces in normal code in an editor, I had been accustomed to using the Tab key to indent in short multi-line inputs in the interactive python.exe interpreter. Recently that stopped working - pressing the Tab key flashes the cursor and doesn't indent. Using spaces does work fine here, though it's not as convenient past a couple of indentations.

I suspect (but am not certain) that the cause was installation of pyreadline or rlcompleter - I had been messing with trying to get tab completion in an interpreter in an embedded application on Windows. Of course in your case another installation could have included those packages.

Answer 2

If you are using Windows with the standard cmd.exe console (and it would have been helpful for you to have stated this up front) then you can use the TAB and arrow keys exactly as you desire.