Is pyton for me?

[Mike Meyer]

"Mark de+la+Fuente" <dela_f at excite.com> writes:

> I need to write simple scripts for executing command line functions.
> Up till now I've used C-Shell scripts for this, but I'm looking for
> a better alternative.  And I keep reading about how “easy” it is to
> program with python.

Lots of answers - but everyone concentrated on telling you how to do
what you were trying to do, and no one answered your question. Which
is actually typical of the c.l.python, but may not be what you want.

As others pointed out, Python isn't a shell, or even a shell scripting
language, so it doesn't handle what you're doing in a "natural"
way. Because of that, it may not be the language for you. Python has
features that work well for building large systems, but those tend to
cause extra work when you want to do things that other languages make
simple.

One thing you might consider is changing shells. See <URL:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/ > for reasons why
you might want to drop csh. There's a similar paper discussing the
problems with later versions of sh (bash, late ksh, etc.), but from
what I recall the problems mostly come from trying to use the extra
features that have been added to those shells. So when writing sh
scripts, I tend to stay with fundamental bourne features.

Other languages have less overhead in invoking external commands. Rexx
and Perl come to mind. You might want to give them a look.

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.