Grep Equivalent for Python

[Aahz]

In article <1174255846.721961.108370 at e1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
tereglow <tom.rectenwald at eglow.net> wrote:
>On Mar 15, 1:47 am, a... at mac.com (Alex Martelli) wrote:
>> tereglow <tom.rectenw... at eglow.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>grep^MemTotal /proc/meminfo | awk '{print $2}'
>>
>> If you would indeed do that, maybe it's also worth learning something
>> more about the capabilities of your "existing" tools, since
>>
>>   awk '/^MemTotal/ {print $2}' /proc/meminfo
>>
>> is a more compact and faster way to perform exactly the same task.
>>
>> (You already received a ton of good responses about doing this in
>> Python, but the "pipegrepinto awk instead of USING awk properly in the
>> first place!" issue has been a pet peeve of mine for almost 30 years
>> now, and you know what they say about old dogs + new tricks!-).
>
>I had no idea you could do that.  Thanks for the tip, I need to start
>reading that awk/sed book collecting dust on my shelf!

Your other option is to completely abandon awk/sed.  I started writing
stuff like this in Turbo Pascal back in the early 80s because there
simply wasn't anything like awk/sed available for CP/M.  In the 90s, when
I needed to do similar things, I used Perl.  Now I use Python.

>From my POV, there is really no reason to learn the advanced shell
utilities.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"Typing is cheap.  Thinking is expensive."  --Roy Smith