What are the best ways to gather input in python? I have used the raw_input() - When you only need to get one line of input (ie: Home on the Range)

But what is the best way to get a undetermined amount of input? I'm trying to find solutions that do not require the importing of the sys module.

os.read(0,somebignumber) # not usually useful
input() # in place of int(raw_input())
sys.stdin

The only way I can think of to read an unknown number of lines of input *without* importing sys is to use a try/except block:

x=''
try:
while 1:x+=raw_input()
except:0

However, it's shorter to import sys:

import sys
x=sys.stdin.read()

Take into consideration that some of these variants are easier to bake into existing loops, most notably the try...except one.