Writing unicode strings via sys.stdout in Python

Assume for a moment that one cannot use `print` (and thus enjoy the benefit of automatic encoding detection). So that leaves us with `sys.stdout`. However, `sys.stdout` is so dumb as to not do any sensible encoding. Now one reads the Python wiki page PrintFails and goes to try out the following code: ``` $ python -c 'import sys, codecs, locale; print str(sys.stdout.encoding); \ sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout); ``` However this too does not work (at least on Mac). Too see why: ``` >>> import locale >>> locale.getpreferredencoding() 'mac-roman' >>> sys.stdout.encoding 'UTF-8' ``` (UTF-8 is what one's terminal understands). So one changes the above code to: ``` $ python -c 'import sys, codecs, locale; print str(sys.stdout.encoding); \ sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(sys.stdout.encoding)(sys.stdout); ``` And now unicode strings are properly sent to `sys.stdout` and hence printed properly on the terminal (`sys.stdout` is attached the terminal). Is this the correct way to write unicode strings in `sys.stdout` or should I be doing something else? EDIT: at times--say, when piping the output to `less`--`sys.stdout.encoding` will be `None`. in this case, the above code will fail.