[Python-ideas] allow overriding files used for the input builtin

[Paul Moore]

On 29 September 2017 at 11:25, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> I like it very much.
>
> But as an alternative, perhaps all we really need is a context manager
> to set the std* files:
>
> with open('/dev/tty', 'r+') as f:
>     with stdio(stdin=f, stdout=f):
>         name = input('Name? ')
>
> print(name)
>
>
> That's nearly as nice, and is possibly useful in more situations. Or
> maybe we should have both?

Agreed - a general way of redirecting stdio would be more generally
useful - I've often replaced stdio, but as far as I can recall never
for input().

There's already contextlib.redirect_stdout() and
contextlib.redirect_stderr(). Adding contextlib.redirect_stdin() would
be logical, but I think a more flexible

    contextlib.redirect_stdio(stdin=None, stdout=None, stderr=None)

would be better - where None (the default) means "leave this alone".

>> Would love to see if anyone else is interested in this. I think it's
>> pretty cool that the core logic really didn't need to be changed other
>> than plumbing in the new args.
>
> Definitely interested!

I'm interested in the general context manager. I don't use input()
enough to be particularly interested in a solution specific to that
function.

Paul