Some general questions about using "stdin","stdout"....

[Dan]

Hello.

If you're new to Python, then input/output isn't the best place to
start. Begin with the tutorial:
  http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html
Other documentation is also linked to from there.

However, I will briefly answer your questions.

>   print "hello"|sys.stdin.read()

In Python the | operator has a different meaning than in a shell. In
Python it means "bitwise or":

>>> print 5 | 9
13


> Why can't i "write" to the stdin?

There may be some contorted way to do that under Unix, but it's not a
good idea. You can pipe input to your program from a shell (as you've
already done), but it's not a good idea to redirect input from within
your program.

You can accomplish the same thing like this:

   if i_want_to_redirect_input:
      my_input_source = open('file.txt')
   else:
      my_input_source = sys.stdin
   # Now read from my_input_source instead of stdin.

-- 
  They had a big meeting, drank some beer and had some pizza and
  decided 'A' would be 65.
       - Jim Greenly, professor at Georgia Institute of Technology