Book Image

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

By : Ganesh Sanjiv Naik
Book Image

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

By: Ganesh Sanjiv Naik

Overview of this book

Python has evolved over time and extended its features in relation to every possible IT operation. Python is simple to learn, yet has powerful libraries that can be used to build powerful Python scripts for solving real-world problems and automating administrators' routine activities. The objective of this book is to walk through a series of projects that will teach readers Python scripting with each project. This book will initially cover Python installation and quickly revise basic to advanced programming fundamentals. The book will then focus on the development process as a whole, from setup to planning to building different tools. It will include IT administrators' routine activities (text processing, regular expressions, file archiving, and encryption), network administration (socket programming, email handling, the remote controlling of devices using telnet/ssh, and protocols such as SNMP/DHCP), building graphical user interface, working with websites (Apache log file processing, SOAP and REST APIs communication, and web scraping), and database administration (MySQL and similar database data administration, data analytics, and reporting). By the end of this book, you will be able to use the latest features of Python and be able to build powerful tools that will solve challenging, real-world tasks
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Working with txt files

A plain text file is used to store data that represents only characters or strings and doesn't consider any structured metadata. In Python, there's no need to import any external library to read and write text files. Python provides an built-in function to create, open, close, and write and read text files. To do the operations, there are different access modes to govern the type of operation possible in an opened file.

The access modes in Python are as follows:

  • Read Only Mode ('r'): This mode opens a text file for the purpose. If that file doesn't exist, it raises an I/O error. We can also call this mode the default mode in which the file will open.
  • Read and Write Mode ('r+'): This mode opens a text file for reading as well as writing purposes and raises an I/O error if the file does not exist.
  • Write Only Mode (&apos...