System bell

[Baza]

Am I right in thinking that >>>print "\a" should sound the system, 'bell'?

B
--
Computer says, 'no'

 

[Matt]

Try:
import os
os.system('\a')

 

[Trent Mick]

[Baza wrote]

Am I right in thinking that >>>print "\a" should sound the system, 'bell'?

It works on the shell on Windows for me (WinXP).

Trent

 

[Mr6]

Try:
import os
os.system('\a')

Ta, that's got it.

B

 

[Trent Mick]

[Mr6 wrote]

Ta, that's got it.

I suspect that you are misinterpreting failure as success here. This is
probably only resulting in a bell from the shell when it complains that
it doesn't know of any command called "\a" to run.

Trent

 

[Daniel Bickett]

I suspect that you are misinterpreting failure as success here. This is
probably only resulting in a bell from the shell when it complains that
it doesn't know of any command called "\a" to run.

Contrarily, \a is in fact the escape sequence for, as the OP put it,
the system "bell" . I can only speak as a Windows user however; I'm
unaware of the prevalence of this feature across operating systems.

 

[Steve Holden]

[Baza wrote]

Am I right in thinking that >>>print "\a" should sound the system, 'bell'?

It works on the shell on Windows for me (WinXP).

Trent

Interesting. From a Cygwin bash shell I got an elegant little dingish
sort of a beep (my volume control was set kind of low). I then ran the
same code in a Windows shell and nearly deafened myself. It appears that
the volume control doesn't affect the Windows XP commans shell beep -
even muting the Windows audio output doesn't stop it (though it does
stop the Cygwin beep). This could cause heart attacks!

regards
Steve

 

[Bengt Richter]

[Baza wrote]

Am I right in thinking that >>>print "\a" should sound the system, 'bell'?

It works on the shell on Windows for me (WinXP).

Trent

Interesting. From a Cygwin bash shell I got an elegant little dingish
sort of a beep (my volume control was set kind of low). I then ran the
same code in a Windows shell and nearly deafened myself. It appears that
the volume control doesn't affect the Windows XP commans shell beep -
even muting the Windows audio output doesn't stop it (though it does
stop the Cygwin beep). This could cause heart attacks!

Another couple of data points:

Running python 2.3/MSVC6 or python 2.4/MinGW in an NT4 console window,
print '\a' beeps via the PC internal speaker (like winsound.Beep).

Running the bash shell of msys, echo -e '\a' also beeps via the PC speaker.
These are not affected by any volume control that I know of.

But running py2.3 idle, print '\a' displays a square empty box (which I
take to be the symbol for "unprintable" characters). That seems like an
oversight in terminal emulation.

Regards,
Bengt Richter

 

[Matt]

Serves me right for blindlyrunning things from IDLE.

This does work (tested on WinXP only):
import os
os.system('echo \a')

 

[Mr6]

[Baza wrote]


Am I right in thinking that >>>print "\a" should sound the system, 'bell'?


It works on the shell on Windows for me (WinXP).

Trent

Interesting. From a Cygwin bash shell I got an elegant little dingish
sort of a beep (my volume control was set kind of low). I then ran the
same code in a Windows shell and nearly deafened myself. It appears that
the volume control doesn't affect the Windows XP commans shell beep -
even muting the Windows audio output doesn't stop it (though it does
stop the Cygwin beep). This could cause heart attacks!

It's a weird thing. But if I run print "\a" from idle it does not work.
But if I save as a file, say, sound.py. Then run that with python
sound.py it does.

Why is that?

B