pythonrc in interactive code

Question

I have a .pythonrc in my path, which gets loaded when I run python:

python
Loading pythonrc
>>>

The problem is that my .pythonrc is not loaded when I execute files:

python -i script.py
>>>

It would be very handy to have tab completion (and a few other things) when I load things interactively.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 09 '10 at 17:40

3

From the Python documentation for -i:

When a script is passed as first argument or the -c option is used, enter interactive mode after executing the script or the command, even when sys.stdin does not appear to be a terminal. The PYTHONSTARTUP file is not read.

I believe this is done so that scripts run predictably for all users, and do not depend on anything in a user's particular PYTHONSTARTUP file.

answered Nov 09 '10 at 17:40

Greg Hewgill

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Thanks. I realise this is good default behaviour, but would like to know if it can be circumvented. I suppose I can just add execfile("~/.pythonrc") to my scripts. – invisiblerhino Nov 09 '10 at 17:49

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 09 '10 at 18:13

As Greg has noted, there is a very good reason why -i behaves the way it does. However, I do find it pretty useful to be able to have my PYTHONSTARTUP loaded when I want an interactive session. So, here's the code I use when I want to be able to have PYTHONSTARTUP active in a script run with -i.

if __name__ == '__main__':
    #do normal stuff
    #and at the end of the file:
    import sys
    if sys.flags.interactive==1:
       import os
       myPythonPath = os.environ['PYTHONSTARTUP'].split(os.sep)
       sys.path.append(os.sep.join(myPythonPath[:-1]))
       pythonrcName = ''.join(myPythonPath[-1].split('.')[:-1]) #the filename minus the trailing extension, if the extension exists
       pythonrc = __import__(pythonrcName)
       for attr in dir(pythonrc):
           __builtins__.__dict__[attr] = getattr(pythonrc, attr)

       sys.path.remove(os.sep.join(myPythonPath[:-1]))
       del sys, os, pythonrc

Note that this is fairly hacky and I never do this without ensuring that my pythonrc isn't accidentally clobbering variables and builtins.

Note: Won't work if your Python file begins with a '.' e.g. `.pythonrc` — bcoughlan, Aug 27 '13 at 17:13

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 18 '15 at 10:35

0

In addition to Chinmay Kanchi and Greg Hewgill's answers, I'd like to add that IPython and BPython work fine in this case. Perhaps it's time for you to switch? :)

answered Nov 18 '15 at 10:35

d33tah

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 24 '11 at 09:57

0

Apparently the user module provides this, but has been removed in Python 3.0. It is a bit of a security hole, depending what's in your pythonrc...

answered Nov 24 '11 at 09:57

invisiblerhino

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pythonrc in interactive code

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