What's an easy way to implement a --quiet option in a python script

Question

Am working on a command line python script - throughout the script, I have a lot of information I am print-ing to the terminal window so that I may follow along with what is happening.

Using OptionParser I want to add a --quiet option so I can silence all the output. I am looking for a pythonic way to go about implementing this throughout the script so that I don't end up doing something like:

if not QUIET: # global variable set by OptionParser
    print " my output "

Am new to python and sure there is a better way. Ideas?

Answer 1

You could use logging and assign those things that should not be printed if QUIET a different log level.

Edit: THC4K's answer shows an example of how to do this, assuming that all output should be silent if QUIET is set. Note that in Python 3 from __future__ import print_function is not necessary:

print = logging.info
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.WARNING if QUIET else logging.INFO,
                    format="%(message)s")

For for important output that should not be silenced by --quiet, define e.g. iprint:

iprint = logging.warning