A beginning beginner's question about input, output and . . .

[Grant Edwards]

On 2021-01-11, DonK <don81846 at comcast.net.REMOVEME> wrote:

> So, what do you folks use Python for?

I mainly use it for writing command-line utilities. Many of them work
on either Windows or Linux, but are mostly used on Linux:

 * Two-pass symbolic assembler and dissassembler for a proprietary
   communications controller.

 * Utilties to encrypt/decrypt files in proprietary formats.

 * Protocol dissector that prints the contents of network traffic for
   a couple different proprietary protocols.  It will parse a file
   saved with Wireshark/tcpdump or it will display live traffic using
   libpcap.

 * A utility to discover and manage a couple different families of
   industrial products (discovery, configiration) using a proprietary
   UDP protocol.

 * Utilities to program firmware into various products and
   microprocessors.

 * Utilities to perform various operations (e.g. run-length encoding)
   on things like FPGA bitstream files.

 * Utilities that implement various serial protocols for testing
   devices that use those protocols.

 * Scraping my favorite comic strips from various web sites and
   compiling them into a local web page.

 * Utilties for working with industrial control devices using
   DeviceNet on CAN bus.

 * An email gateway daemon that accepted SMTP mail and relayed it to MS
   Exchange using WebDAV.

 * An email gateway daemon that fetched email from MS Exchnage using
   Outlook/DCOM and relayed to an SMTP server.

 * Custom SMTP servers used to test SMTP clients.
 

I also wire the occasional GUI application:

 * A GTK "terminal" application that connects to a serial port.

 * A GTK IMAP mailbox notification app that monitors any number of
   IMAP mailboxes and notifies the user when there is new mail.

 * WxWindows and Tk applications to do various device management tasks
   for industrial equipment (update firmware, change configurations,
   etc.) via TCP and UDP network protocols.

 * WxWindows utilities for working with industrial control devices
   using DeviceNet on CAN bus.

I've also written web "backend" code that gathers and archives data
from my solar panels every 10 minutes and then produces graphs and
charts on demand for AJAX web applications.

Where I work we also use Python to run our production stations --
testing and programming circuit boards and assembled products.

There are also a couple commercial applicatoins I use daily (but
didn't write) that are written in Python:

 Hiri (email client)
 Plex (DVR and home theater application)