How to make a python script "pipeable" in bash?
I wrote a script and I want it to be pipeable in bash. Something like:
echo "1stArg" | myscript.py
Is it possible? How?
See this simple echo.py
:
import sys
if __name__ == "__main__":
for line in sys.stdin:
sys.stderr.write("DEBUG: got line: " + line)
sys.stdout.write(line)
running:
ls | python echo.py 2>debug_output.txt | sort
output:
echo.py
test.py
test.sh
debug_output.txt content:
DEBUG: got line: echo.py
DEBUG: got line: test.py
DEBUG: got line: test.sh
I'll complement the other answers with a grep example that uses fileinput to implement the typical behaviour of UNIX tools: 1) if no arguments are specified, it reads data from stdin; 2) many files can be specified as arguments; 3) a single argument of -
means stdin.
import fileinput
import re
import sys
def grep(lines, regexp):
return (line for line in lines if regexp.search(line))
def main(args):
if len(args) < 1:
print("Usage: grep.py PATTERN [FILE...]", file=sys.stderr)
return 2
regexp = re.compile(args[0])
input_lines = fileinput.input(args[1:])
for output_line in grep(input_lines, regexp):
sys.stdout.write(output_line)
if __name__ == '__main__':
sys.exit(main(sys.argv[1:]))
Example:
$ seq 1 20 | python grep.py "4"
4
14
In your Python script you simply read from stdin
.
Everything that reads from stdin is "pipeable". Pipe simply redirects stdout of former program to the latter.