How to output to the console and file?

Use logging module (http://docs.python.org/library/logging.html):

import logging

logger = logging.getLogger('scope.name')

file_log_handler = logging.FileHandler('logfile.log')
logger.addHandler(file_log_handler)

stderr_log_handler = logging.StreamHandler()
logger.addHandler(stderr_log_handler)

# nice output format
formatter = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
file_log_handler.setFormatter(formatter)
stderr_log_handler.setFormatter(formatter)

logger.info('Info message')
logger.error('Error message')

Probably the shortest solution:

def printLog(*args, **kwargs):
    print(*args, **kwargs)
    with open('output.out','a') as file:
        print(*args, **kwargs, file=file)

printLog('hello world')

Writes 'hello world' to sys.stdout and to output.out and works exactly the same way as print().

Note: Please do not specify the file argument for the printLog function. Calls like printLog('test',file='output2.out') are not supported.

I came up with this [untested]

import sys

class Tee(object):
    def __init__(self, *files):
        self.files = files
    def write(self, obj):
        for f in self.files:
            f.write(obj)
            f.flush() # If you want the output to be visible immediately
    def flush(self) :
        for f in self.files:
            f.flush()

f = open('out.txt', 'w')
original = sys.stdout
sys.stdout = Tee(sys.stdout, f)
print "test"  # This will go to stdout and the file out.txt

#use the original
sys.stdout = original
print "This won't appear on file"  # Only on stdout
f.close()

print>>xyz in python will expect a write() function in xyz. You could use your own custom object which has this. Or else, you could also have sys.stdout refer to your object, in which case it will be tee-ed even without >>xyz.

I just want to build upon Serpens answer and add the line:

logger.setLevel('DEBUG')

This will allow you to chose what level of message gets logged.

For example in Serpens example,

logger.info('Info message')

Will not get recorded as it defaults to only recording Warnings and above.

More about levels used can be read about here