redirect prints to log file

Question

Okay. I have completed my first python program.It has around 1000 lines of code. During development I placed plenty of print statements before running a command using os.system() say something like,

print "running command",cmd
os.system(cmd)

Now I have completed the program. I thought about commenting them but redirecting all these unnecessary print (i can't remove all print statements - since some provide useful info for user) into a log file will be more useful? Any tricks or tips.

Answer 1

Python lets you capture and assign sys.stdout - as mentioned - to do this:

import sys
old_stdout = sys.stdout

log_file = open("message.log","w")

sys.stdout = log_file

print "this will be written to message.log"

sys.stdout = old_stdout

log_file.close()