Save what was printed on the screen

Question

Is there any way to save into a variable what print sends to the screen, so I will be able to print it back after erasing the screen?

If you are printing on the screen, you should already have it stored. Can you specify where is the information on the screen from? — TYZ, Oct 02 '18 at 19:01
What have you tried? If you show your attempt and circumstances it'll be easier to help. — Matt Messersmith, Oct 02 '18 at 19:01
What screen are you talking about? Please give more details. — Irfanuddin, Oct 02 '18 at 19:01
May be this is what you are looking for: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5309978/sprintf-like-functionality-in-python — Forever Learner, Oct 02 '18 at 19:04

aneroid · Answer 1 · 2018-10-02T19:14:34.043

Don't know why this question is being downvoted. Anyway, an answer from Raymond Hettinger on Twitter, utilises contextlib.redirect_stdout():

with open('help.txt', 'w') as f:
    with contextlib.redirect_stdout(f):
        help(pow)

Although, in this case the output is being redirected into a file, rather than a variable and is Python3, not 2.7.

From the docs, to capture that in a variable:

For example, the output of help() normally is sent to sys.stdout. You can capture that output in a string by redirecting the output to an io.StringIO object:
f = io.StringIO()
with redirect_stdout(f):
    help(pow)
s = f.getvalue()

This answer on SO shows another way to do it, and in Python2:

Great answer, [much to learn](https://docs.python.org/3/library/contextlib.html#contextlib.redirect_stdout): until now I did `print(..., file=f)` by hand. — Wolf, Feb 20 '20 at 15:03

Save what was printed on the screen

1 Answers1