[Python-ideas] ProtoPEP: A Standardized Marker for Mirroring the TTY to Other Devices

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 5:17 AM, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> wrote:
> The history of computing offers a progression of text I/O devices,
> most notably the Teletype machine [1].  This device had such an impact
> that we still identify our terminals by "TTY".  Presently the terminal
> text I/O in Python is facilitated through sys.stdin/stdout/stderr.
> This is a proposal to facilitate mirroring the data passing across
> these three objects to another device on the system such as a printer.
>  The API to the do so would be through a new builtins special name:
> __mifflin__.

This would vastly improve the grokkability of Python. Currently, the
most fundamental operation in programming is sadly misnamed:

print("Hello, world!")

When this PEP is accepted, as it most surely should be, the print
function will actually send content to a printer. I have seen a number
of people[1] extremely confused and even put off programming by the
way in which the "print" command does not print, just as in REXX the
"say" command does not produce sound. Finally this terrible lack will
be cured, once and for all.

[1] The fine print down the bottom reminds you that zero is a number.

ChrisA