Eclipse/PyDev treats newlines pasted into its console as instructions, but I want it to parse them as part of a long string

Question

I am working on a Python script to automate some repetitive text-fiddling tasks I need to do. I use PyDev as a plugin for Eclipse as my IDE.

I need the script to accept user input pasted from the clipboard. The input will typically be many lines long, with many newline characters included.

I currently have the script asking for input as follows:

oldTableString = raw_input('Paste text of old table here:\n')

The console correctly displays the prompt and waits for user input. However, once I paste text into the console, it appears to interpret any newline characters in the pasted text as presses of the enter button, and executes the code as if the only input it received was the first line of the pasted text (before the first newline character), followed by a press of the enter key (which it interprets as a cue that I'm done giving it input).

I've confirmed that it's only reading the first line of the input via the following line:

print oldTableString

...which, as expected, prints out only the first line of whatever I paste into the console.

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How can I get Eclipse to recognize that I want it to parse the entirety of what I paste into the console, newlines included, as a single string?

Thanks!

Answer 1

What about reading directly from the clipboard or looping over every line until it receives a termination symbol or times out. Also, is it important to make it work under Eclipse? Does it work when executed directly?

Answer 2

text = ""

tmp = raw_input("Enter text:\n")

while tmp != "":
    text += tmp + "\n"
    tmp = raw_input()

print text

This works but you have to press enter one more time.