Python -- How Do You View Output That Doesn't Fit The Screen?

I should say I'm looking for a solution to the problem of viewing output that does not fit on your screen. For example, range(100) will show the last 30ish lines in your terminal o

Solution 1:

just for fun :o)

Original version for Python2:

class Less(object):
    def __init__(self, num_lines):
        self.num_lines = num_lines
    def __ror__(self, other):
        s = str(other).split("\n")
        for i in range(0, len(s), self.num_lines):
            print "\n".join(s[i: i + self.num_lines])
            raw_input("Press <Enter> for more")

less = Less(num_lines=30)  
"\n".join(map(str, range(100))) | less

a Python3 version:

class Less(object):
    def __init__(self, num_lines):
        self.num_lines = num_lines
    def __ror__(self, other):
        s = str(other).split("\n")
        for i in range(0, len(s), self.num_lines):
            print(*s[i: i + self.num_lines], sep="\n")
            input("Press <Enter> for more")

less = Less(num_lines=30)  
"\n".join(map(str, range(100))) | less

Solution 2:

If you want to do this for an interactive python session, you should use a terminal emulation that allows you to scroll back up. I believe most of them do.

If you're using an actual terminal, or if you don't have a choice of terminal emulators, perhaps you can use GNU screen.

(If you're using Windows, you can change the screen buffer size to allow scrolling back up to 9999 lines).

And if you need this for the output of your program, you can try to use the curses module to implement scrolling yourself.

Solution 3:

Yes, there is a way and it is quite trivial, that's why not specifically described. Say you have long list and want to see just the beginning:

>>> lst = range(1000)   # let's make list of thousand elements
>>> lst[:100]           # i want to see just the first 100
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]
>>> lst[100:201]        # ok, now the 2nd hundred 
[100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200]
>>> lst[-100:]          # and now just the last 100, pretty please?
[900, 901, 902, 903, 904, 905, 906, 907, 908, 909, 910, 911, 912, 913, 914, 915, 916, 917, 918, 919, 920, 921, 922, 923, 924, 925, 926, 927, 928, 929, 930, 931, 932, 933, 934, 935, 936, 937, 938, 939, 940, 941, 942, 943, 944, 945, 946, 947, 948, 949, 950, 951, 952, 953, 954, 955, 956, 957, 958, 959, 960, 961, 962, 963, 964, 965, 966, 967, 968, 969, 970, 971, 972, 973, 974, 975, 976, 977, 978, 979, 980, 981, 982, 983, 984, 985, 986, 987, 988, 989, 990, 991, 992, 993, 994, 995, 996, 997, 998, 999]

The same [] slicing works the same for strings. For dictionary you can cheat somehow, like using str() to convert it to string and then display with the same slicing :-)

Solution 4:

Say you're writing a program in Python and all it does is pretty print some stuff. The output is in prettiest_print_ever. You already do weird tricks importing fcntl, termios, struct and friends to get the terminal size so that you can use the full width of the terminal (if any); that also gives you the screen height, so it makes sense to use it. (That also means you've long given up any pretenses of cross-platform compatibility, too.)

Sure, you can reinvent the wheel, or you can rely on less like other programs do (e.g. git diff). This should be the outline of a solution:

def smart_print(prettiest_print_ever, terminal_height = 80):
  if len(prettiest_print_ever.splitlines()) <= terminal_height:
    #Python 3: make sure you write bytes!
    sys.stdout.buffer.write(prettiest_print_ever.encode("utf-8"))
  else
    less = subprocess.Popen("less", stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
    less.stdin.write(prettiest_print_ever.encode("utf-8"))
    less.stdin.close()
    less.wait()

Solution 5:

If you work in ipython you can issue shell commands within your interactive python session. That means that you just do

In [1]: less myfile.txt

I also really like being able to arrow up and down to get previous commands and getting the output from previous commands by doing something like

In [33]: print cos(Out[7]*pi/180)