python - Capture stdout from a script?

Question

suppose there is a script doing something like this:

# module writer.py
import sys

def write():
    sys.stdout.write("foobar")

Now suppose I want to capture the output of the write function and store it in a variable for further processing. The naive solution was:

# module mymodule.py
from writer import write

out = write()
print out.upper()

But this doesn't work. I come up with another solution and it works, but please, let me know if there is a better way to solve the problem. Thanks

import sys
from cStringIO import StringIO

# setup the environment
backup = sys.stdout

# ####
sys.stdout = StringIO()     # capture output
write()
out = sys.stdout.getvalue() # release output
# ####

sys.stdout.close()  # close the stream 
sys.stdout = backup # restore original stdout

print out.upper()   # post processing

Answer 1

For future visitors: Python 3.4 contextlib provides for this directly (see Python contextlib help) via the redirect_stdout context manager:

from contextlib import redirect_stdout
import io

f = io.StringIO()
with redirect_stdout(f):
    help(pow)
s = f.getvalue()