[Tutor] Unix philosophy

[Alan Gauld]

> That means that if I wanted to do it in a more general
> way that with fileinput module I should use the
> sys.stdin/out functions?
> Are you thinking to something like this:
> guillecat.py
> # Simple cat UNIX command
> import sys
> if len(sys.argv)==1:
>     while(1):
>         readed=sys.stdin.read(1)
>         sys.stdout.write(readed)
> else:
>     for files in sys.argv[1:]:
>         filed=file(files,'r')
>         readed=filed.read()
>         sys.stdout.write(readed)

Exactly so. If no filename is provided assume it's stdin.

Another often seen trick is to have a flag for using as a filter
(Unix tar is an example) so you specify the tar filename as "-f file"
and if the name is '-' use stdin.

tar cvf foo.tar

writes the output to foo.tar

tar cvf -

writes the output to stdout (usually a pipe to another command)

But your way is a perfectly valid way too.

Alan G.