Automating FTP file transfers

[Rene Pijlman]

Limey Drink:
>Just wondering about the bigger picture with regards to sys admin scripts,
>in your opinion, is creating these type of system administration scripts
>preferable/easier than using say bash scripts, or DOS .bat scripts ?

Yes! You get real data structures, classes, exception handling, powerful
libraries and such.

For example, you can write system administration scripts in Python that
use a relational database, parse XML config files, send e-mail,
up/download with FTP ...

>Just wondering if you think I should be trying to execute the in built OS
>programs such as FTP etc. calling them from python 

No. Why would you want to do that? Only as a last resort.

>or should I be using the libraries that come with Python such as FTPlib and 
>say if I wanted to send email should I be using the SMTP lib

Yes. Otherwise you'll loose the exception handling, classes, data
structures etc. :-)

-- 
René Pijlman