Known Solutions to Arrow Keys Problem Not Working

State Tool
1

Arrow keys do work with MacOS default version of python3

MacOS> /usr/bin/python3
Python 3.9.6 (default, Aug 11 2023, 19:44:50) 
[Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.0.40.1)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

But Active State Python3 Arrow keys result in Control characters…

MacOS> $HOME/Library/Caches/activestate/bin/python
Python 3.10.11 (main, Oct 11 2023, 13:17:31) [Clang 13.1.6 (clang-1316.0.21.2.5)] on darwin
Binary build provided by ActiveState http://www.ActiveState.com.
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ^[[D^[[A^[[C

A solution posted elsewhere indicates that I need to import readline, but “state install readline” fails.
readline is documented as requiring pypm to install, and pypm apparently is not yet supported by Active State Python3.

Ideas?

2

I think you found the code.activestate.com page circa 2008-2010 which mentions using PyPM to install readline versions that were available at that time.

PyPM was only available for ActivePython 2.5 and 2.6, and was dropped for ActivePython 2.7 because pip was a more-than-capable replacement.

The main problem with readline is that it isn’t compatible with Python3 after 3.4. We can look at a modern replacement for readline that fixes the arrow key problem, but any replacement will not be delivered by PyPM.