[Tutor] code review please

[Eakin, W]

Hello,
    Although I've been coding in PHP and ASP and JavaScript for a couple of
years now, I'm relatively new to Python. For learning exercises, I'm writing
small Python programs that do limited things, but hopefully do them well.

The following program takes a text file, reads through it, and any word
longer than four characters will have the internal letters scrambled, but
the first and last letters of the word will remain unchanged. Here's what
happened when I ran the program on a file called example.txt.

Before:
This is a sample of text that has been scrambled, before and after.

After:
 Tihs is a sapmle of txet taht has been sblrmcead, broefe and aetfr.

The code follows, so any comments and/or suggestions as to what I did right
or wrong, or what could be done better will be appreciated.

thanks,
William


#!/usr/bin/env python
#filename: wScramble.py
#filelocation: /home/william/programming/code/python
#filedate: 12/25/2005

import sys
import random


def fileScramble(fileName):
    newFile = file('scrambled.txt', 'w')
    newRow = ''
    for line in fileName:
        newRow = ''
        tempList = line.split(' ')
        for word in tempList:
            newRow = newRow + ' ' + wordScramble(word)
        newRow = newRow + '\n'
        newFile.write(newRow)
    newFile.close()


def wordScramble(word):
    punctuation = ['.', ',', ':', ';', '(', ')']
    if len(word) < 4:
        return word
    elif len(word) == 4 and word[-1] in punctuation or word[0] in
punctuation:
        return word
    elif len(word) == 4:
        word = word[0] + word[2] + word[1] + word[3]
        return word
    else:
        (fCut, fLetter) = getLetter(word, 0, 'forward')
        (lCut, lLetter) = getLetter(word, -1, 'back')
        tempWord = list(word)
        del tempWord[:fCut + 1]
        del tempWord[lCut:]
        random.shuffle(tempWord)
        middleString = "".join(tempWord)
        scrambledWord = fLetter + middleString + lLetter
        return scrambledWord


def getLetter(string, number, direction):
    if direction == 'forward':
        increment = 1
    else:
        increment = -1
    if string[number].isalpha() == True:
        if direction == 'forward':
            return (number, string[:number + 1])
        else:
            return (number, string[number:])
    elif string[number].isalpha() == False:
        return getLetter(string, number + increment, direction)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        if sys.argv[1].isspace() == True:
            print "No file was given to the program to
process.\n<----------> Program quitting <---------->\n"
        else:
            try:
                f = open(sys.argv[1])
                fileScramble(f)
                f.close()
            except IOError:
                print "That file does not exist, or you do not have
permission to access it.\n<----------> Program quitting <---------->\n"
    except IndexError:
        print "No file was given to the program to process.\n<---------->
Program quitting <---------->\n"
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