Question

Currently, I have the following code in a script:

print "Loading... "
html = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
print "Done"

That works great, it displays loading, pauses while the download completes, and then displays done. The only problem is, the “done” is on the next line.

Ideally, it would be on the same line, so I would get Loading... (pause) done

I tried adding a comma onto the end of the first print statement, but although that achieves the desired output, it doesn’t output any of the string until it has loaded the HTML, because the comma tells python to wait until a completing print statement (at least I think it does).

So how can I print the “Loading” and “done” on the same line, while still being able to output them independently?

Answer 1

Standard output is line buffered, you have to flush it:

sys.stdout.flush()