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