[Tutor] How to Compare rpm version using Python Script

[David Rock]

* David <bouncingcats at gmail.com> [2019-11-30 13:07]:
> On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 at 12:01, Alan Gauld via Tutor <tutor at python.org> wrote:
> 
> I sometimes use them in my shell scripting where appropriate, due to
> the limited data structures available there, but I've never seen them used
> or advocated anywhere else.
> 
> Are there reasons why they are not used more widely by programmers
> to solve simple textual data separation problems?

Two obvious reasons come to mind:

1. People are generally not aware of them
2. They are often overkill when something simpler will work

In the case of our RPM example, using a simple space will get the job
done. While using the unit separator would work, it's a lot more
complicated to use it in practice, and unnecessary.  Typing multiple
^V^_ characters to build the format string is a lot more painful than
just hitting the spacebar.

That's not to say these characters don't have value.  The RPM case is an
overly-simplistic example where using them is unnecessary, but there are
definitely plenty of cases where finding a character that isn't in your
data is a lot harder.

-- 
David Rock
david at graniteweb.com