Newbie Here

[Kent Johnson]

Mark Sargent wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I'm taking the plunge into Python. I'm currently following this tutorial,
> http://docs.python.org/tut/
> I am not a programmer in general, although I've learnt a bit of bash 
> scripting and some php/asp. I want to get into python to use it for 
> Linux/Unix related stuff. A question I have, is, those of you who use it 
> for the same things, what do you primarily use it for. Could you show me 
> some examples.? I find the hardest thing with programming, is not 
> remember the syntax/logic etc, but, when to use it. Perhaps that is also 
> a personal thing, but, I'd love to see some basic examples out there. 

As others have said, Python is very useful for a wide range of tasks. But you asked for simple 
examples. One thing I use Python for is simple file manipulations. I recently had to look through 
2,400 folders to see if they contained two specific files in a nested subfolder. This is easy to do 
in Python; below is my script.

Kent


''' Look in the warehouse for courses that are missing
     \output\html\saveres.htm and/or \output\html\readres.htm

     path module from http://www.jorendorff.com/articles/python/path/
'''

import path, sys

def checkCourses(basePath, out):
     ''' Iterate through the course / output / html folders rooted at basePath
         looking for missing files.
     '''
     for coursePath in basePath.dirs():
         htmlPath = coursePath / 'output' / 'html'
         if not htmlPath.exists():
             continue

         for fileName in [ 'saveres.htm', 'readres.htm' ]:
             aPath = htmlPath / fileName
             if not aPath.exists():
                 print >>out, aPath
                 print >>out

basePath = path.path(r'\\Amrnasfs1\QA\BS_and_SIMS\Content')

out = open('MissingFiles.txt', 'w')
checkCourses(basePath, out)