Python is the best and most popular general purpose scripting language; the universal scripting language

[Kirk Job-Sluder]

On 2004-04-10, Ron Stephens <rstephens at vectron.com> wrote:
> Python is the best and most popular general purpose scripting
> language. That is, Python is the best and most popular general
> purpose, dynamic, interpreted language. Sure, there are other
> scripting languages that are more popular for specific application
> domains, and there are big company backed systems languages that are
> far more popular; but in its niche, Python is tops.
>
>....

> Long live Python, the universal solvent!

I like python but I disagree.  In addition I think that putting any
language as the "universal solvent" is not all that great.  Back when I
considered perl the swiss army chainsaw of system administration, I
wasted a lot of time adding unnecessary fluff to a script when all that
was required was a set of pipes between existing programs.

For example:

 awk '$1 !~ /^(127\.0\.0\.1|192\.168\.1)/ {print $1}' \
 < /var/log/httpd-access.log | sort | uniq


A nice Bourne one-liner that does useful work, but which I really don't
feel is worth doing in python.  The two hours I spent learning awk has
paid off whenever I need to pretty-print a character-delimited file.  



>
> Ron Stephens
> www.awaretek.com/weblog/index.html