Pasting in terminal with indentation

Question

I am pasting a python code in Ubuntu Terminal. However, the code contains for loops for which indentation is necessary. Is there a way to paste the code maintaining indentation. I remember there is a command like paste"some character" which directly pastes with indentation. But I cant find it online.

Can somebody suggest a way or remind me of the command?

I am aware of that possibility. But I am trying to analyze some data for which I need to run the code snippet by snippet because its easier to comprehend the data, in that way (at least for me) — mathisbetter, May 24 '18 at 16:47
Can you give an example of the code you are pasting and also tell us which program is running in terminal when you are pasting it? — Sebastian Stark, May 24 '18 at 16:49
It is basically an analysis of some numbers and some graphs related to them. I am using the basic Ubuntu Terminal — mathisbetter, May 24 '18 at 16:50
@mathisbetter We need an example of the code so we can try it ourselves. As for the terminal, we need to know what shell you're running in it, like python, python3, ipython, pypy, etc. — wjandrea, May 24 '18 at 17:31

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 27 '18 at 00:18

You're better off pasting code to python interpreter. In the shell, however, you can start here-doc redirection with python <<EOF, paste code, and close it with EOF. Like so:

$ python3 <<EOF
> for i in range(5):
>     print(i)
> EOF
0
1
2
3
4

Of course, make sure you're using proper Python version and your code syntax matches that.

If you wanna get creative, install xclip package to access clipboard contents programmatically ( installation is done via sudo apt-get install xclip) and create the following function in your .bashrc, then source it:

pyfromclip(){ python3 < <(xclip -o -sel clip); }

This function uses process substitution < <() feature of bash, and redirects output of xclip, which releases clipboard contents to its stdout stream, into python's stdin stream.

$ cat ./hello_world.py 


d = { "Hello": 1, "World": 2 }

for key,value in d.items():
    print(key,value)
$ xclip -sel clip ./hello_world.py 
$ # We copied into clipboard, so now let's run it
$ pyfromclip 
Hello 1
World 2

Pasting in terminal with indentation

1 Answers1