Asking for advice: Using Python for data validation

[Chris Barker]

juan.alcolea at bt.es wrote:

> - Do you think that Python is a good choice for this task? Please note that
> the scripts must run in very differente platforms (NT, *nix, maybe Mac...).

Yes.

> I'm fairly new to Python, and although I'm impressed with it, I'm not sure
> about it being really and easily portable unless you're a C & OS guru...

Python itself is VERY portable, although some of the extension modules
ar less so.

> - Is there any module or library specially designed for this kind of task?

no the whole task, but...

> (parsing text data files with fixed or variable length fields,

Check out SciPy's io functions for help with this.
(http://www.scipy.org/

>validating date formats, etc...)

mxDateTime is excellent for this.

Both of those are available for *nix and Win32, but I'm not so sure
about the Mac.



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
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