How to redirect output of Python script to terminal

Question

How can I redirect my Python script output to one of the open terminal windows under Ubuntu? The script is spawned by KMail filtering rule.

Are you talking about virtual terminals or about terminal windows in X (similar to xterm)? — Sven Marnach
– Sven Marnach, Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 15:17
Talking about terminal in X, which I open by running terminal application from Applications->Accessories. — Pablo
– Pablo, Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 15:19
The typical solution (to what I think is your underlying problem) is to have the script append to a log file on disk, and then use tail -f on the log file in a terminal window when you want to watch things in (almost) real time. You'll want to rotate the log files once in a while. — hmakholm left over Monica
– hmakholm left over Monica, Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 15:20

David Wolever · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-09 15:28:30Z

1

Creating a simple socket server would be one method… But I'd probably use fifos:

$ mkfifo /tmp/my_fifo
$ cat producer.py
f = open("/tmp/my_fifo", "w")
f.write("hello, world!\n")
f.close()

Then you could read from it using cat /tmp/my_fifo

Or a simple log file:

$ cat producer.py
f = open("/tmp/my_log", "a")
f.write("hello, world!\n")
f.close()

Then you could read from it using tail -f /tmp/my_log

answered Aug 9, 2011 at 15:28

David Wolever

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2 Comments

os.mkfifo() exists, so your first example could include that.

That's very true — I hadn't considered it.