Redirect print command in python script through tqdm.write()

Redirecting sys.stdout is always tricky, and it becomes a nightmare when two applications are twiddling with it at the same time.

Here the trick is that tqdm by default prints to sys.stderr, not sys.stdout. Normally, tqdm has an anti-mixup strategy for these two special channels, but since you are redirecting sys.stdout, tqdm gets confused because the file handle changes.

Thus, you just need to explicitly specify file=sys.stdout to tqdm and it will work:

from time import sleep

import contextlib
import sys

from tqdm import tqdm

class DummyFile(object):
  file = None
  def __init__(self, file):
    self.file = file

  def write(self, x):
    # Avoid print() second call (useless \n)
    if len(x.rstrip()) > 0:
        tqdm.write(x, file=self.file)

@contextlib.contextmanager
def nostdout():
    save_stdout = sys.stdout
    sys.stdout = DummyFile(sys.stdout)
    yield
    sys.stdout = save_stdout

def blabla():
  print("Foo blabla")

# tqdm call to sys.stdout must be done BEFORE stdout redirection
# and you need to specify sys.stdout, not sys.stderr (default)
for _ in tqdm(range(3), file=sys.stdout):
    with nostdout():
        blabla()
        sleep(.5)

print('Done!')

I also added a few more tricks to make the output nicer (eg, no useless \n when using print() without end='').

/EDIT: in fact it seems you can do the stdout redirection after starting tqdm, you just need to specify dynamic_ncols=True in tqdm.

It might be the bad way, but I change built-in print function.

import inspect
import tqdm
# store builtin print
old_print = print
def new_print(*args, **kwargs):
    # if tqdm.tqdm.write raises error, use builtin print
    try:
        tqdm.tqdm.write(*args, **kwargs)
    except:
        old_print(*args, ** kwargs)
# globaly replace print with new_print
inspect.builtins.print = new_print

By mixing, user493630 and gaborous answers, I created this context manager which avoid having to use the file=sys.stdout parameter of tqdm.

import inspect
import contextlib
import tqdm

@contextlib.contextmanager
def redirect_to_tqdm():
    # Store builtin print
    old_print = print
    def new_print(*args, **kwargs):
        # If tqdm.tqdm.write raises error, use builtin print
        try:
            tqdm.tqdm.write(*args, **kwargs)
        except:
            old_print(*args, ** kwargs)

    try:
        # Globaly replace print with new_print
        inspect.builtins.print = new_print
        yield
    finally:
        inspect.builtins.print = old_print

To use it, simply:

for i in tqdm.tqdm(range(100)):
    with redirect_to_tqdm():
        time.sleep(.1)
        print(i)

To simplify even further, it is possible to wrap the code in a new function:

def tqdm_redirect(*args, **kwargs):
    with redirect_to_tqdm():
        for x in tqdm.tqdm(*args, **kwargs):
            yield x

for i in tqdm_redirect(range(20)):
    time.sleep(.1)
    print(i)