Is pyton for me?

[Mark de+la+Fuente]

I need to write simple scripts for executing command line functions.  Up till now I've used C-Shell scripts for this, but I'm looking for a better alternative.  And I keep reading about how “easy” it is to program with python.

Unfortunately after reading "diveintopython" and the python tutorial, I'm not sure how to do what I need to do.

Here is an example of the type of thing I would like to be able to do.  Can I do this with python?  How do I get python to execute command line functions?

>From the command prompt (not from the python interpreter – running linux for example) I would type:

gensky 3 21 12 > sky.rad

This would call the non-python program “gensky” which creates a computer model of a sky on march 21st at 12:00 PM and puts this information into a file called sky.rad.

If I create a CSH script like the one below, I can automate tasks by building loops along the lines of:

#!/bin/csh -fv

# simple script to create multiple sky files.

foreach hour (10 12 14)
		gensky 3 21 $hour > sky$hour.rad
end

If I try and do a gensky command from the python interpreter or within a python.py file, I get an error message:

NameError: name ‘gensky’ is not defined

So even if I get the python syntax correct, I can’t get these commands to execute.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to get python scripts to execute this sort of thing, what I should be looking at, or if there is something else I might consider besides python, please let me know.

Thanks for your help.

Mark

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