How to write a program that outputs the source code?

Question

You are asked to write a program that prints the source-code of the above program as its output.

To test your program, you can proceed as follows:

1. Run your program and save the generated output to a file named generated.py
2. Run generated.py and examine its output.

We assume that your initial Python program is in file lab3_x.py the following steps must be run in the PyCharm terminal:

 %python lab3_x.py > generated.py %python generated.py

Notice the output redirection > . It causes the output of program lab3_x.py to be written to the file generated.py . The output of lab3_x.py is the python program (source code) that converts stuff. (You may open file generated.py with Pycharm and check its contents!)

My questions are as follows:

1. What does > do when written in the terminal?
2. Does it has to open a fully working program when generated.py is executed in terminal?
3. When I try to lab3_x.py > generated.py it opens up a new file named after generated.py , but with nothing inside. Why is this?

My code:

print('# Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion program\n')
print("fahren = float(input('Enter degrees Fahrenheit: '))")
print("celsius = (fahren - 32) * 5 / 9")
print("print(fahren, 'degrees Fahrenheit equals',")
print("      format(celsius.'.1f'), 'degrees Celsius')")

Answer 1

When you run your code, you are using redirection ">" which outputs the code to a file. So your print statements actually print to the python file, which should be executable assuming the print statements result in a correct python file.

So lab3_x.py > generated.py will write the print statements onto the python file/