Tab completion in ipdb not working when output is processed

Question

Sometimes I resort to using ipdb for debugging a Python script, which has a very nice autocomplete feature.

The problem is, the script usually runs through a shell pipeline that processes its output (for instance python script.py |& tee "stdout.txt").

To me it seems like there is no answer to this (either live without autocomplete, or disable the stdout piping).

My question is made up of two parts:

• Is there any way to have both autocomplete and stdout processing?
• If not, exactly why not?

Answer 1

In the end I worked around this by avoiding shell pipes, and writing the output file from Python itself.

I can watch the file change live using less +F.

I guess I was asking for too much interactivity from L/Unix pipes.