bash/shell to python

[Michael Torrie]

On 05/16/2012 08:16 PM, Rita wrote:
> I currently build a lot of interfaces/wrappers to other applications
> using bash/shell. One short coming for it is it lacks a good method
> to handle arguments so I switched to python a while ago to use
> 'argparse' module.

Actually there is a great way of parsing command line options in
bash, using the GNU "getopt" program.  See:
http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/getopt/

This command is available on all Linux systems, and most BSD systems.
There's also freegetopt, a BSD implementation for unix, MSDOS, or Windows.

> Its a great complement to subprocess module. I was wondering if there
> is a generic framework people follow to build python scripts which
> are replacing shell scripts? Is there a guide or a template to
> follow?

Besides the advice given by the other posters in this thread, here is a
very good document on some unique aspects of python that are well suited
to doing system programming or shell scripting in python:

http://www.dabeaz.com/generators/

This describes how generators can be used to replace pipes with
something that is quite efficient and very pythonic.  See the
presentation pdf first.