File tests in Python

[Harry George]

If you want tor etain perl-ish oidioms, see pyperl at:
  http://www.seanet.com/~hgg9140/comp/index.html
Specifically, file operations at:
  http://www.seanet.com/~hgg9140/comp/pyperl-0.4.1/doc/manual.html#L008

You do things like:
    #---clean out old dir---
    if p.d(newdir):
        p.system("rm -rf $newdir")
    else:
        debug(ftn,p("$newdir not found"))



Joakim Hove <hove at phys.ntnu.no> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> I have just bought "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz and David Ascher,
> and browsed quickly through it. I like both the book and my first
> impression of Python very good.
> 
> Previously I have used Perl quite a lot - but I never really got the
> hang of more "complex" datastructures in Perl. Writing 
> 
>    List = [1,2,["List","in","List"]]
>  
> in Python is just the way it _should_ be, really nice!
> 
> 
> However, there are two (at least right now) things I have enjoyed in
> Perl which I have not found equivalents of in Python.
> 
> First Perl has an assorted set of file-test like this:
> 
> $file = "myfile";
> if (-x $file) {
>         print "The file \"$file\" is executable \n";
> } else {
>         print "Sorry - can't run \"$file\" \n";
> }        
> 
> How would I do this and related (is a directory/symbolic
> link/binary/..) tests in Python?
> 
> 
> 
> Secondly a correct Perl-installation comes with a very neat program
> called perldoc - which is used to access the Perl
> documentation. Typing for instance:
> 
>  bash% perldoc -f localtime
> 
> gives you the documentation for the localtime() function - very
> convenient! I know this is not a property of Perl - the programming
> language, but nevertheless, do I have access to something like this
> from python? [Standard Linux install of Python - using emacs as
> editor].
> 
> 
> Joakim Hove
> 
> 
> -- 
> === Joakim Hove      www.phys.ntnu.no/~hove/   ======================
> # Institutt for fysikk  (735) 93637 / E3-166  |  Skøyensgate 10D    #
> # N - 7491 Trondheim    hove at phys.ntnu.no     |  N - 7030 Trondheim #
> ================================================ 73 93 31 68 ========

-- 
Harry George
hgg9140 at seanet.com