spark.py

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-

BARS = u'▁▂▃▅▆▇'

import sys

data = sys.argv[1:] or sys.stdin.read().split()
data = (x.strip() for x in data)
data = [float(x) for x in data if x]
incr = min(data)
width = max(data) / len(BARS)

bins = [i*width+incr for i in range(len(BARS))]

indexes = [i for n in data
           for i, thres in enumerate(bins)
           if thres <= n < thres+width]

print ''.join(BARS[i] for i in indexes)

What can I do if my terminal doesn't support unicode?