As noted elsewhere (prompt-toolkit/python-prompt-toolkit#432), prompt_toolkit lacks a mechanism for the history search prompt to be customized for vi mode. The default inside prompt_toolkit is emacs mode, so vi mode users are shown the emacs mode history search prompt (e.g. "I-search: ", "I-search backward:") instead of "/" or "?". When the prompt_toolkit issue is resolved, please update IPython to pass the appropriate argument (likely editing_mode) to create_prompt_layout.
FYI: There was some confusion that this won't be fixed in prompt_toolkit. In fact there is no reason not to make this work exactly like readline. However, it will probably have to wait for prompt_toolkit 2.0 where I'm refactoring some part of the search functionality.
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jonathanslenders commented on Mar 4, 2017
FYI: There was some confusion that this won't be fixed in prompt_toolkit. In fact there is no reason not to make this work exactly like readline. However, it will probably have to wait for prompt_toolkit 2.0 where I'm refactoring some part of the search functionality.
ivanov commented on May 17, 2017
I just want to mention that if you would like the old (IPython <= 4.x) readline interface, it is now available separately as rlipython.
Right now, it only works in IPython 6.0 (Python 3), but it will also work in Python 2 with the next IPython 5 release (5.4).