pipedarg.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# pipedarg
# by Keith Gaughan <http://talideon.com/>
# 
# The software is hereby placed in the public domain, and the author
# disclaims ownership over it and all responsibility for any damage caused
# directly or indirectly through its use. It may be freely copied and/or
# mangled, provided that altered versions have a different name and are
# not attributed to the original author.
#

"""
Copies standard input to a temporary file and executes the command specified
in the arguments with the name of the temporary file as the last argument.

Obviously this won't work if the executed process forks a child to do its
work and exits immediately.
"""

from __future__ import with_statement
import sys
import os
import tempfile

with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() as tf:
    tf.write(sys.stdin.read())
    tf.flush()
    args = sys.argv[1:]
    os.spawnvp(os.P_WAIT, args[0], args + [tf.name])