Re: bash vs. python scripts - which one is better?
On Aug 7, 2007, at 11:42 AM, Manon Metten wrote:
Hi,
I'm about to learn bash or python scripting.
- Which one is easiest to learn?
That's debatable, I think. Bash's syntax is more idiosyncratic, but
there's less of it.
- Which one is more powerful?
Python.
- Can I execute /bin commands from within a python script
(something like mkdir or ls)?
I'm sure you can, although I don't know how. (I'm not a Python
programmer.)
Or should I learn bash scripting anyway?
If you plan to do much system administration, learning bash scripting
is worthwhile. There are three reasons I can think of right off the
bat:
- Every Unix-like system you encounter will have some version of the
Bourne shell. Not every system will have Python.
- You will often need to modify or maintain other people's bash
scripts, since that's how most startup scripts and the like are written.
- Simple bash scripts can be done right from the shell prompt, which
is sometimes handy.
Stuff like 'for FILE in `ls *.wav` ; do lame -h -b 160 $FILE
$FILE.mp3 ; done' to encode a bunch of WAV files to MP3, to give a
crude example.
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