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)

Chapter 9, Working with Various Files

  1. f.readline() reads a single line from the file; a newline character, (\n), is left at the end of the string, and is only omitted on the last line of the file if the file doesn't end in a newline. If you want to read all the lines of a file in a list, you can also use list(f) or f.readlines().
  2. Basically, using with open() just ensures that you don't forget to close() the file, making it safer/preventing memory issues.
  3. r means the string will be treated as raw string.
  4. Generators simplify the creation of iterators. A generator is a function that produces a sequence of results instead of a single value.
  5. The pass statement in Python is used when a statement is required syntactically but you do not want any command or code to execute. The pass statement is a null operation; nothing happens when it executes.
  1. In Python, an anonymous function...