Searching for the best scripting language,

[David Eppstein]

In article <FXpzc.96175$DG4.66965 at fe2.columbus.rr.com>,
 Carl Banks <imbosol at aerojockey.invalid> wrote:

> >    Ok, see, here's the thing.  I look at the Ruby code and can kind
> > of follow it.  I look at the Python code and can kind of follow it.
> > but in neither case have I, in glancing here and there today, been
> > able to decipher exactly what is going on.  Care to show the 5 line
> > long form to see if I get that?  No explination, just curious to see
> > if I can get it reading real code instead of hacked up line noise.
> 
> Of course you can.
> 
>     import glob
>     import os
>     import re
> 
>     f = {}
>     for pattern in ("*.rar.*","*.r[0-9][0-9].*"):
>         for listing in glob.glob(prefix+pattern):
>             f[listing] = None
>     for filename in f:
>         os.system("cat %s.* > %s" % (sesc(filename),sesc(filename)))
> 
> 
> I don't know what sesc is.  I assume he had defined it elsewhere,
> because he said this was only part of a script he wrote (and that's
> what scares me--I can understand a throwaway one-liner looking like
> this, but not a line in a script).

As long as we're cleaning up code, how about

    import glob, os, sets
    f = Set()
    for pattern in ("*.rar.*","*.r[0-9][0-9].*"):
        f.update(glob.glob(prefix+pattern))
    for filename in f:
        os.system("cat %s.* > %s" % (sesc(filename),sesc(filename)))

Now it's not even much longer than the original unreadable mess...

-- 
David Eppstein                      http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science