[lobster_johnson]

I wonder why that was necessary, since NetBSD's libedit exists in a portable form. It is (or was) the default on OS X.

http://thrysoee.dk/editline/

Edit: libedit is mentioned in the readme, and it's implied that the reason for this other library is code size.

[fceller]

Another reason is Windows. Even READLINE breaks when used on Windows with UTF-8 characters.