[Tutor] Scrolling through output in shell

[Eike Welk]

On Monday 17 November 2008, ALAN GAULD wrote:
> > I'm writing a program that reads a text file onto the screen. The
> > text file is too large to read so I want to be able to scroll
> > through it with the arrow key or something like that. I am not
> > using GUI.

You could also output the text, and give it to 'less' to display it. 
This is exactly what 'man' does.
You start other programs from python with the 'subprocess' module:
http://docs.python.org/library/subprocess.html


You could also go the classical Unix way and output the text to 
standard output (just use print). If necessary you could then give 
the output to 'less'. Your program(s) would be used in the following 
fashion:

my_program --foo -a -b -c --be-cool --read this-file.txt | less

Command line options are parsed with the 'optparse' module:
http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html


Kind regards,
Eike.