Interface with shell commands

[Justin Paston-Cooper <paston cooper gmail com>]

Hello,

I was reading through the documentation on creating custom functions
in Python. I am wondering whether it is possible to bypass creating
custom functions in Python every time, and just use shell calls. Maybe
someone has implemented such a thing as a custom Python function.

I envision a function which allows you to specify a shell command and
a range of cells. Every time an update occurs in that range of cells,
the data in those cells is piped on stdin as a tsv/csv to the shell
function, and the result is then parsed and displayed where the
function is called.

Imagine:

Spreadsheet as coordinator, GUI and display of results of multiple
"actors". Output to one-off shell command calls, to pipes which are
read by separate running processes, etc.

Obviously the devil is in the details. Would you really want to send
the whole of the input every time, etc. I am wondering whether anyone
has tried to do this before, and what the considerations are. Any
advice appreciated.

Justin