How to suppress console output in Python?

Question

I'm using Pygame/SDL's joystick module to get input from a gamepad. Every time I call its get_hat() method it prints to the console. This is problematic since I use the console to help me debug and now it gets flooded with SDL_JoystickGetHat value:0: 60 times every second. Is there a way I can disable this? Either through an option in Pygame/SDL or suppress console output while the function calls? I saw no mention of this in the Pygame documentation.

edit: This turns out to be due to debugging being turned on when the SDL library was compiled.

Answer 1

You can get around this by assigning the standard out/error (I don't know which one it's going to) to the null device. In Python, the standard out/error files are sys.stdout/sys.stderr, and the null device is os.devnull, so you do

sys.stdout = os.devnull
sys.stderr = os.devnull

This should disable these error messages completely. Unfortunately, this will also disable all console output. To get around this, disable output right before calling the get_hat() the method, and then restore it by doing

sys.stdout = sys.__stdout__
sys.stderr = sys.__stderr__

which restores standard out and error to their original value.

Answer 2

Here's the relevant block of code from joystick.c (via SVN at http://svn.seul.org/viewcvs/viewvc.cgi/trunk/src/joystick.c?view=markup&revision=2652&root=PyGame)

    value = SDL_JoystickGetHat (joy, _index);
#ifdef DEBUG
    printf("SDL_JoystickGetHat value:%d:\n", value);
#endif
    if (value & SDL_HAT_UP) {

Looks like a problem with having debugging turned on.