Backspace doesn't remove all bytes of a multi-byte
UTF-8 character.

To reproduce the problem:
$ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
$ python
Python 2.3.4 (#1, Jun 11 2004, 16:35:29) 
[GCC 3.3.3 20040412 (Gentoo Linux 3.3.3-r3, ssp-3.3-7,
pie-8.5.3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for
more information.
>>> import readline
>>> raw_input() # ä, return
ä
'\xc3\xa4'
>>> raw_input() # ä, backspace, return

'\xc3'
>>> 


A small C program does not have the same problem:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <readline/readline.h>
#include <readline/history.h>

void pprint(const char *s);

int main(void) {
	char *line;

	for (;;) {
		line = readline("> ");
		if (!line)
			break;
		pprint(line);
		free(line);
	}

	return 0;
}

void pprint(const char *s) {
	while (*s) {
		if (isprint(*s))
			putchar(*s);
		else
			printf("\\x%x", *s & 0xff);
		s++;
	}
	putchar('\n');
}

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user_id=65253

Hi, it looks like this might be the same problem already
fixed in "[ 914291 ] Fix readline for utf-8 locales", but
your python version is from before the fix went in.  Can you
try again with python 2.4, or 2.3.5 (when it is released, or
the release23-maint branch of cvs)?

Also, you could check if python's readline.so is linked to
an older version of libreadline.

Logged In: YES 
user_id=6656

Is this still relavent?

Please close this, reportedly fixed and no further info from OP.