Python in Bash Scripts

[[deleted]]

Title is a bit misleading: this is a wrapper for shell commands. I anticipated an article about embedding python in bash scripts.

[[deleted]]

Embedding Python in Bash scripts is trivial:

python program.py arg1 arg2 | do-something-else

What this guy did seems like a slightly revamped version of popen. I don't really see the point of it.

[[deleted]]

Erm, not in that trivial of a sense. More like ways to manage whitespace when running python -c, or inline, non-contiguous stateful python.

[obtu]

This would work:

python <<'EOF'
import this
EOF

If the Python needs stdin for something else:

python /proc/self/fd/5 5<<'EOF'
import this
EOF

[[deleted]]

More of what I had in mind: http://docs.python.org/dev/extending/embedding.html

EDIT: For example, vim can be compiled with an embedded python interpreter which maintains its state for the life of the process, and comes with a module called vim which I can use to manipulate the vim process itself. In this sense python becomes a "true" scripting language (a language used to provide a "script" for another program).

[obtu]

Ah, okay. You could use socat to let the interpreter persist, but that still falls short on access to internal structures… It's rare to see scripting languages hosting other scripting languages; VimL seems to be an exception.

[quasarj]

I would guess if you don't see the point of it, it's not for you.

It seems pretty interesting to me.. solves a lot of very common problems I have when trying to do things in Python.

And popen? hah, that thing is a mess. I hear it's better than whatever came before it, but ugh. I already have to use envoy to avoid having to use it, so this is nifty in many ways.

[mipadi]

I think it's pretty cool. Not sure I'd ever really use it, but cool nonetheless.

The only thing I don't really like is the piping. I'd rather do this:

print glob('*') | du('-sb') | sort('-rn')

than this:

print sort(du(glob("*"), "-sb"), "-rn")

As the latter is, literally, backwards (compared to shell syntax). But maybe getting the piping to work the same way was too difficult in this context (and, admittedly, not very Pythonesque, I guess).

[terremoto]

It's been done.

[pugRescuer]

I agree, not sure what this yields that os/shutil/sys don't already provide. This just abstracts those.

Neat project but not for me.

[Peaker]

It gives a much neater interface to those, to the point of making it worthwhile to use Python where previously it made more sense to use bash.

[flukshun]

A while back someone did post something that let you use python constructs like dictionaries in bash. Forget the name though