Newbie: Can Python replace unix scripts ?

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 03:21:12 GMT, Joshua Macy <amused at webamused.com> wrote:
>I'm sure
>that the gurus can point out things that can only be accomplished, or
>best accomplished with the shell languages, 

I don't know if I'm a guru, but I do know that you can accomplish *far* more
with Python than with shell scripts. More readable, more reuseable. In fact,
POSIX is so well supported I think you can do just about anything in Python
that you can in C. Shell scripts don't even come close.

The two advantages of shell scripts are;
1) like vi, the interpreter's always there, even on some crusty old box
2) they express very succinctly their problem domain - executing external
   commands. You can write a script to start a dozen processes more easily than
   in Python, but if you need any data structures, reuseability or complicated
   flow control, you're dead meat.
   
Don't use csh.

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <bmcd at es.co.nz>