@SimonW thanks for the reply but i’m bit confused on the terminology here. For me python IDE means entirely something different from the python/ipython REPL. Are they the same thing?
If you invoke python on the terminal,  you get:
>>REPL

that’s what I would call a REPL and not an IDE. So just to make sure that I’m making my point clear here is that all the above that I mentioned refer to the REPL. Don’t know if that makes any difference but just to clarify things up.
Thanks!