Tab Tintinabulation

Enabling Tab Auto-Completion For Python

The Python Standard Library Reference on rlcompleter provides everything you need. Following the directions there here's what I did.

1. Make a directory in your home directory

~$ mkdir .pythonrc

2. Create a file in your new directory with the following lines

~/.pythonrc$ vim pythonstartup.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
try:
    import readline
except ImportError:
    print "Module readline not available."
else:
    import rlcompleter
    readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")

3. Add the following line to your .bashrc file

export PYTHONSTARTUP=~/.pythonrc/pythonstartup.py

4. restart your shell and start python