Redirecting input of IDLE window

[Peter Otten]

Friedrich Rentsch wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>      I work interactively in an IDLE window most of the time and find
> "help (...)" very useful to summarize things. The display comes up
> directly (doesn't return a text, which I could edit, assign or store). I
> suspect that there are ways to redirect the display, say to a file.
> Thanks for suggestions.
> 
> 
> Frederic

Here's a simple example for a custom pager that stores the last help text as 
a string:


>>> import pydoc
>>> def mypager(text):
	global last_help
	text = pydoc.plain(text)
	last_help = text
	print(text)

	
>>> pydoc.pager = mypager
>>> help(help)
Help on _Helper in module _sitebuiltins object:

class _Helper(builtins.object)
 |  Define the builtin 'help'.
 |  
 |  This is a wrapper around pydoc.help that provides a helpful message
<snip>

>>> last_help.splitlines()[0]
'Help on _Helper in module _sitebuiltins object:'