7.20.1 Example

The following example demonstrates how to use the readline module's history reading and writing functions to automatically load and save a history file named .pyhist from the user's home directory. The code below would normally be executed automatically during interactive sessions from the user's PYTHONSTARTUP file.

import os
histfile = os.path.join(os.environ["HOME"], ".pyhist")
try:
    readline.read_history_file(histfile)
except IOError:
    pass
import atexit
atexit.register(readline.write_history_file, histfile)
del os, histfile

The following example extends the code.InteractiveConsole class to support history save/restore.

import code
import readline
import atexit
import os

class HistoryConsole(code.InteractiveConsole):
    def __init__(self, locals=None, filename="<console>",
                 histfile=os.path.expanduser("~/.console-history")):
        code.InteractiveConsole.__init__(self)
        self.init_history(histfile)

    def init_history(self, histfile):
        readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
        if hasattr(readline, "read_history_file"):
            try:
                readline.read_history_file(histfile)
            except IOError:
                pass
            atexit.register(self.save_history, histfile)

    def save_history(self, histfile):
        readline.write_history_file(histfile)