Newbie: Can Python replace unix scripts ?

[François Pinard]

"Thanh Nguyen" <tomng92 at sympatico.ca> writes:

> I am from the win32 world and about to do some unix programming.  I am
> scared stiff of the csh scripts because they are in my point of view,
> unreadable.

Hello.  I quite suggest you to avoid learning `csh' scripting, and using
`csh' altogether if you can.  Learn `sh' or `bash' scripting instead.
I quite imagine that `sh' scripting is still frightening for someone coming
from the u$oft world, but at least, you will have spared the detour of
learning `csh', which is much less popular on Linux, and `csh' scripting,
which is not very popular on any Unix.

> Can Python spare me of that csh scripting ?

Yes, it surely can, yet you have to become especially familiar with the
`os' module in the Python library.  However, if you intend to do a lot of
work with Linux, and for a good while, it is still useful being able to at
least _read_ `sh' scripts written by others, because there are many of those.

> Or may be somebody point me to some other scripting language that are
> more user friendly than those unix scripting languages ?

Before knowing Python, I would have said Perl.  But now, I would not :-).

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard