Hello,

I want to be able to do basic scripting tasks such as manipulating text files, directories etc. Making backup scripts and such as well as perhaps later on making functional programs.

I've looked at Python mostly and it seems it will fit my needs, however I was wondering if I wanted to manipulate files and directories on a UNIX system via Python am I not going to need to know BASH anyhow?

If so, would you recommend learning BASH first?

How would Ruby and Perl compare?

Thanks in advance

Manipulating files and directories (e.g. copying, moving, removing, appending to, &c.) you would want to use Bash. Python can do it, but it will take three times as much code. Shells rule for system administrative type tasks. But for general programming, definitely you will have to learn a language like Perl, Python, and Ruby. All three of the latter are great choices; I consider Perl more concise and better for smallish programs and Python better for larger systems, Ruby somewhere in between. But that's just my opinion so you'll just have to take a look at them to find out which one suits you best.

For manipulating text files you could use sed, grep or awk. I'm not sure if bash would be helpful learning python (apart from the fact that it's possible to run bash commands from within python programs) but knowing bash is generally very useful. Sometimes it may be quicker to do something in bash, sometimes python will do the job better, etc.

I can't help you with it, but here is a thread about perl/python/ruby.

Thank you both for your input!

My actual "programming problem" lies with my ppp internet connection (USB).

Every now and again it would disconnect (it's wireless) and I would have to manually use "sudo pon neotel" to reconnect it again and I have to do sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1d09 product=0x4000 every time after booting then sudo pon neotel.

Basically I want this to be done automatically via some script. It must automatically connect when I boot my comp and automatically reconnect when it has disconnected.

Bash would be the easiest I presume?

For these kind of problems which lie closely to the OS, yes, use Bash. Probably you want to check you connectivity and undertake some action based on that. Something you now do manually on the command line, if you automate it, it is logical to do that in Bash.

See my signature for a link to the Bash programming guide.

jlinkels

@jlinkels

Your link about GAWK seems to be broken. They might have moved the site.

Thanks again,

I will look into Bash and probably learn Python or Ruby too for my normal programming.

Fixed it. Although both linked documents about AWK cover the same subject they differ in content.

Thanks.

jlinkels

I think you should also add Java to the list of languages listed by the other members above (vis-a-vis Perl, Python, and Ruby). Using it - you can all the things you wanted to do too!


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