Question

What I’d like to do is something like

 $echo $PATH | python --remain-interactive "x = raw_input().split(':')"
 >>>
 >>> print x
 ['/usr/local/bin', '/usr/bin', '/bin']

I suppose ipython solution would be best. If this isn’t achievable, what would be your solution for the situation where I want to process output from various other commands? I’ve used subprocess before to do it when I was desperate, but it is not ideal.

UPDATE: So this is getting closer to the end result:

 echo $PATH > /tmp/stdout.txt; ipython -i -c 'stdout = open("/tmp/stdout.txt").read()'

Now how can we go about bending this into a form

 echo $PATH | pyout

where pyout is the “magic solution to all my problems”. It could be a shell script that writes the piped output and then runs the ipython. Everything done fails for the same reasons bp says.

Answer 1

In IPython you can do this

x = !echo $$$$PATH

The double escape of $ is a pain though

You could do this I guess

PATH="$PATH"
x = !echo $PATH
x[0].split(":")