From: Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2005-03-10T07:44:25+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Irb enhancements

Cs. Henk wrote:
>  * zsh style: after entering a multiline command, the up arrow (or
>  ctrl-p) brings back the whole multiline command in one. Then it behaves
>  as an array of lines, up/down arrow moves between the lines, and
>  left/right arrow moves within a line. As I know, there is no way to go
>  back in one step from one multiline block to the other, you have to
>  climb up linewise. While in general it's better than bash style, this
>  latter behaviour could be quite painful after a ten line class
>  definition. Maybe not an issue for a shell, but is an issue for irb.
> 
>  * pyrepl style:  after entering a multiline command, ctrl-p
>  brings back the whole multiline command in one, Then it behaves as an
>  array of lines, up/down arrow moves between the lines, and left/right
>  arrow moves within a line. Hitting ctrl-p/ctrl-n always moves between
>  multiline blocks.

In zsh up-arrow and ctrl-p are both bound (by default) to 
'up-line-or-history'.  If you're on any given line of a command and hit 
"meta-x up-history" you'll go to the previous entry, not up lines. 
Getting the pyrepl behaviour should be as simple as binding Ctrl-P to 
up-history.

> My idea is that pyrepl should be ported to ruby eventually. Not only it
> has the mentioned features, but then we would have a totally accessible
> and controllable access to readline functionality in pure ruby, and one
> wouldn't need to meditate which other parts of readline should have a ruby
> binding for being able to implement this idea or that.

Wasn't someone looking at rewriting readline so that we could have a non 
GPLed readline implemenation for Ruby?  In addition to the licensing 
issue, this would sure make lives easier for OS X users.

Ben