Piping periodic data between Python scripts

Question

How to receive data from the environment e.g. bash

I am trying to launch two Python scripts in bash and pipe stdout from one of them to stdin of the other. The first script outputs a single number every second.

./script1 | ./script2
./script1 > ~/file &; tail -f ~/file

I tried those, but can't get it working. script1 outputs via Python's print, while script2 is tested with echo "21.11 22.23 33.233" | ./script2 and is known to work.

If I terminate script1 ofter some time, and then cat ~/file, I see the actual data. However, at the time of execution, neither of the above examples work.

How do I make this work? I would like to be able to work both with and without intermediate file.

Answer 1

In the python script make sure you call:

sys.stdout.flush()

after print-ing. You don't have to do that on each statement, but you have to do it on each group of prints that has to be processed. ( import sys if not done yet).