Discussion on: How would you rewrite this Python code?

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Replies for: I think the simplest is the first one :D Or you can wrap that if in a normal function if you plan to use it more than once: def file_or_stdout(...

So why do you need to hide stdout this way?

I'm just trying to keep the code clear and non-repetitive. In terms of level of effort and maintainability, if it needs to be able to optionally write to a file, breaking the inner logic out into a function as inspired by @thinkslynk is probably best.

But if it's a one-off project it might be even better to only write to stdout and pipe it to a file in the shell if needed. (Sometimes it's fun to over-engineer though.)