Grep Equivalent for Python

[tereglow]

On Mar 15, 1:47 am, a... at mac.com (Alex Martelli) wrote:
> tereglow <tom.rectenw... at eglow.net> wrote:
>
>    ...
>
> > server using the /proc FS.  For example, in order to obtain the amount
> > of physical memory on the server, I would do the following in shell:
>
> >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!-).
>
> Alex

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!