2008/9/27 Wolfgang Woehl <tito at rumford.de>: > Emanuel Rumpf: > >> python -c "d='monday'.capitalize(); print d[0:3]" > > Instan methods, whoa. You win :) Can you get rid of d? > like this: ? python -c "print 'monday'[:3].capitalize()" with use of stdin: echo "monday" | python -c "import sys; print sys.stdin.read().capitalize()[:3]"