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)

Text wrapping

In this section, we will learn about the textwrap Python module. This module provides the TextWrapper class that does all the work. The textwrap module is used for formatting and wrapping plain text. This module provides five main functions: wrap(), fill(), dedent(), indent(), and shorten(). We are going to learn these functions one by one now.

The wrap() function

The wrap() function is used to wrap an entire paragraph in to a single string. The output will be a list of output lines.

The syntax is textwrap.wrap(text, width):

  • text: Text to wrap.
  • width: Maximum length allowed of a wrapped line. The default value is 70.

Now, we will see an example of wrap(). Create a wrap_example.py script and write the following...