list scanner loop...?

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, tefol wrote:

> Hi there.
>
> Another newbie, armed with Learning Python.  Setting myself a task of
> manipulating all the VirtualHost entries on a Linux Apache server....

Oh hell...

Not for being a newbie, for wanting to go anywhere near VirtualHost with a
program. I guess sending a newbie after that is probably best. You all seem to
think of such a thing as a "challenge". To any sane person such a thing would
be nuts ;)

> The first thing I wanted to do was to clean up the number of newlines
> between eachvirthost entry...    Which then allowed me to make a list of
> VirtualHost entries...
>
> Just because it was easy I decided to sort them,  though this will lead to
> another challenge later when I try to put a specific entry abck to the top
> of the list.

IIRC, if you use __default__:80, then you won't need a specific one at the
top of the list.

> Next, and this was the main purpose of the project in the first place, I
> need to check through each VirtualHost to see if they are logging, and then
> if they aren't insert a TransferLog and ErrorLog entry into their
> VirtualHost.
>
> This is where I get into a spot of bother.  I need to do something similart
> to creating a file scanner loop,  but instead of a file I need to use this
> list.   I just don't see how.

You need to go through each element of the list:

---
for i in lFile:
  [do something to i]
  [do something else]
   ...
---

i will contain each of the elements of the list one at a time in order.

> Is it possible?   If I write the list out to a file, then do a file scanner
> loop all the \n in each list entry will make everything screwy.

Don't write it to a file until you are completely, absolutely, 100% done. File
operations are SLOOOOOOW compared to in-memory tasks.

> The code I have below works great,  I just can't see where to take it next
> to accomplish what I need.   Any advice, comments, even style guide would
> be greatly appreciated.
>
> Tefol

Something you can do is write code to tear apart the VirtualHost sections
line-by-line and store the directive and its options separately. I'm sure that
there are plenty of people who would find such a tool useful :)

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams  <ignacio at openservices.net>