Problems with sys.stout.flush()

[Carl Banks]

On May 22, 10:33 pm, Joel Ross <jo... at cognyx.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm using python 2.5 and trying to flush the sys.stout buffer with
> sys.stout.flush(), but doesn't seem to work. Each time a line is printed
>    it appends the one before it I need to clear the output and write a
> new output without appending the previous one.

That's not how streams work, chief.  Once you output (and flush)
something you can't un-output it.

What you probably want to do is to write a carriage return ("\r")
which usually causes the cursor to return to the beginning of the
line, so that any new text you write overwrites the old text.

This has nothing to do with flushing; flushing doesn't erase or clear
the old input.  Flushing is usually needed for a different reason,
however, namely standard output doesn't actually get sent to the
console until it sees a newline ("\n") unless you flush the buffer.

Try to adapt this example to your problem:

for i in xrange(11):
    sys.stdout.write('*'*(10-i) + ' '*i + '\r')
    sys.stdout.flush()
    time.sleep(2)


Notice that you have to print out spaces as well, to overwrite the
previous characters on the line (well, it might not be strictly needed
for a progress bar that only grows, but it's normally a good idea.


> I have tried the -u
> (unbuffered) option for python and a few examples from this sitehttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/107705/python-output-buffering
>
> Code:
>
> import sys
> from time import sleep
>
> def progress(number, total,  char):
>
>      percentage = float(number*100)/total
>      percentage = int(round(percentage))
>      percentage = int(100 - percentage)
>      if percentage > 0:
>          char = char * percentage
>          sys.stdout.write(char)
>          sys.stdout.flush()      #Not working correctly
>          sleep(2)
>
> progress(40, 50, "*")
> progress(30, 50, "*")
> progress(20, 50, "*")
> progress(10, 50, "*")
> progress(2, 50, "*")
>
> Regards
>
> jross



Carl Banks