How to handle both `with open(…)` and `sys.stdout` nicely?

Question

Often I need to output data either to file or, if file is not specified, to stdout. I use the following snippet:

if target:
    with open(target, \'w\') as h         


        

Answer 1

Stick with your current code. It's simple and you can tell exactly what it's doing just by glancing at it.

Another way would be with an inline if:

handle = open(target, 'w') if target else sys.stdout
handle.write(content)

if handle is not sys.stdout:
    handle.close()

But that isn't much shorter than what you have and it looks arguably worse.

You could also make sys.stdout unclosable, but that doesn't seem too Pythonic:

sys.stdout.close = lambda: None

with (open(target, 'w') if target else sys.stdout) as handle:
    handle.write(content)