We all know that one of the cool things that Python offers is it’s interactive shell that makes it possible to quickly test things. It’s included in every Python release and can be invoked by simply entering ‘python’ on the command-line. While this is great already, the official interactive shell lacks several features that would be convenient (such as code completion, syntax hilighting, pasteservice support…). IPython is an attempt to provide an interactive python shell with the same capabilities, but additional goodies. I was using it mainly because it featured code completion.

I came to the python support channel today to ask about some strange behavior I had observed. Consider the following snippet:

    In [1]: class Foo(object):
    ...:     def __getattr__(self, attr):
    ...:         print attr
    ...:         
    ...:         

    In [2]: foo = Foo()

    In [3]: foo.asd
    asd
    asd

    In [4]: Foo().asd
    asd

Now this should of course print ‘asd’ once in every case. This is IPython’s fault and seems to be related to this bug report. When asking about this, somebody suggested bpython. I headed over to their page and was quite pleased by what I saw in their video. bpython features syntax hilighting, code completion, expected parameters, rewind and pastebin support. See for yourself: