Some versions of the Python interpreter support editing of the current input line and history substitution, similar to facilities found in the Korn shell and the GNU Bash shell. This is implemented using the GNU Readline library, which supports Emacs-style and vi-style editing. This library has its own documentation which I won't duplicate here; however, the basics are easily explained.
Perhaps the quickest check to see whether command line editing is
supported is typing Control-P to the first Python prompt you get. If
it beeps, you have command line editing. If nothing appears to
happen, or if ^P is echoed, you can skip the rest of this
section.