PEP 842 postmortem: how do we protect the standard library?

danielhollas · August 21, 2026, 4:34pm

Possibly relevant to this discussion; PyREPL’s tab completion currently does not respect the __all__ attributes. Should it?

github.com/python/cpython

pyrepl autocomplete from x import <tab> to only display public members

opened 12:57AM - 30 Apr 26 UTC

mpkocher

type-feature

# Feature or enhancement ### Proposal: When using autocomplete in the REPL, `…from x import <tab>` will show all non-underscore prefixed members. This is a `dir-like` behavior that is useful to inspect and understand what can be imported. However, this mechanism isn't filtering on `__all__` of the module and can yield a long list of non-useful candidates to autocomplete. Two examples shown below, `pathlib` and `collections.abc`. The feature request is that when a user enters `from x import <tab>` only the candidates defined in `__all__` are listed. <img width="1280" height="920" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3465f558-db78-413a-9732-05006d1c6c16" /> <img width="1280" height="920" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d389fe97-e303-4e68-be25-5a4e0b532df5" /> ### Has this already been discussed elsewhere? No response given ### Links to previous discussion of this feature: _No response_ ### Linked PRs * gh-156146