Skip to main content

Python Convert

I shall officially look to Python for all my scripting needs from now on. Just when I thought scripting could not get any easier than Perl, Python
has come along and proved me wrong. Everything I have heard about Python's simplicity and elegance is true.

My Python education started a while back when I attended at least two tutorials in grad school by Python enthusiasts who were trying to pull some of us Perl enthusiasts to their side. The whole idea of learning a whole new scripting language did not appeal to me and thus I didn't give Python much thought. Lately I have had some downtime and there seemed to be no more productive way to spend it than learning Python and that's what I did.

My first set of tutorial was a quick and basic intro by Steven Thurlow. Aside from what is contained in those s ets of lectures, I needed to learn two sets of subjects, namely string/text manipulation and system calls. David Mertz provides a nice introduction to text processing using Python. The official Python documentation provides a few quick examples on making system calls using Python. So, in a very short time, I have learned to do in Python what took me a whole lot longer using Perl.

I took a slightly roundabout way to learn Python in an effort to cut corners, but it should be quick and easy to learn the basics from the official Python tutorial at http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LaTeX Greeting Cards

No, no, not that kind of latex. You are pretty sick for thinking that. I am talking about LaTeX, the typesetting program. Back to greeting cards. Anybody else hate greeting cards? The type that you buy at the store, sign and deliver even though the message is very impersonal and superficial? Yeah, those kind. I hate them very much. Not only do I hate spending time trying to find something that's mildly personal, but I hate paying for them too. $3-5 on that garbage is a travesty. Jerry Seinfeld captures my feelings towards Hallmark cards perfectly in this clip: or this one http://www.youtube.com/v/7tq-RE_6yVo This problem has become significant enough for me to start working on solutions. I am going to make my own cards using LaTeX. So, I googled "LaTeX greeting cards" and came across the the gcards package. It requires that you also install the textpos and graphicx packages, if you don't have them installed already. I am working with a Linux system
Post a Comment
Read more

Economic Aid to Developing Countries - The Stats

World economics has been an interest of mine for a long time and I will start blogging about it here. Questions like how and if the US can continue its dominance and prosperity, what role China and India will play in the world and what the future holds for the likes of Ethiopia and Eritrea fascinate and worry me quite a bit. To the best of my non-economist abilities, I will address these questions in the future. My first entry derives some general conclusions from statistics on economic aid from developed countries to developing and third-world countries that I found on BBC . It is no surprise the US leads in this category and a better measure of generosity would be one where the amount of aid is given as a percentage of the country's GDP or revenues. Considering this aid is coming from governments as opposed to NGO's, it would be more informative to calculate this aid as a percentage of a government's revenue. Unfortunately, what BBC reports is the amount of aid as a
Post a Comment
Read more

Victim of Asylum Roulette

Not too many stories resonate with me as much as the plight of legitimate asylum seekers whose desperate plea to find refuge in the US is ultimately decided by the questionable preference, judgment and mood of a single asylum officer (with some oversight from a regional asylum director) on one fateful day. That decision, according to numerous credible and through studies, depends largely on the location of the regional asylum center, the legal representation of the the applicant, the gender of the asylum officer just as much as the merit of the asylum case, while in fact the legitimacy of the asylum case should be the only relevant factor. This phenomenon has become so real that researchers at the Georgetown University law school have dubbed it the Refugee Roulette . Why am I so sensitive about this subject? My most devastating tragedy of late has been the denial of my legitimate and honest application for political asylum at the Chicago Asylum Office. When I applied believing the
2 comments
Read more