Broken Number Pad on macOS in New Interactive Interpreter in 3.13.0
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- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
Bug report
Bug description:
When using the new interactive interpreter, digits can no longer be entered using the number pad on a standard full-size Mac keyboard. This did not occur in 3.12 or earlier and is likely not desired behaviour.
Workaround:
Pressing the "clear" button on the keyboard will fix this (acting like a toggle). I suspect this is because the Mac clear key shares a key code with "Num Lock" on Windows, where this is standard behaviour.
This is NOT standard behaviour on macOS, however. MacOS keyboards do not have a "Num Lock", nor do their keyboards have markings for secondary actions as with windows keyboards.
I imagine that very few users would recognize that their number pad is not working in the new Python interpreter because of a mis-applied platform-specific key binding of the "clear" key.
CPython versions tested on:
3.13.0
Operating systems tested on:
macOS
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the number-pad behavior in the new interactive interpreter on macOS with Python 3.13.0, comparing it with Python 3.12 or earlier. Trace the interpreter's macOS key handling, especially the clear-key behavior; done means number-pad digits work normally without pressing clear and existing behavior remains intact.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- cli
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100