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> without excessive verbosity If no-one (including you, unless you dream in bash) is ever going to modify or extend the script, OK. Otherwise python's readabil

> without excessive verbosity If no-one (including you, unless you dream in bash) is ever going to modify or extend the script, OK. Otherwise python's readability/maintainability trumps excessive verbosity every time.

geofft 8y ago
By "excessive verbosity" I do mean poor readability and poor maintainability. If you're invoking 5 commands and most of your Python code is wiring up the commands to each other right, just write 5 lines of shell, don't make me pull up the subprocess docs to see if your 30 lines of Python are doing the same thing and how to make a small change without risking pipes deadlocking. Python is readable and maintainable when it's doing the things Python is suited towards doing. Running lots of external processes is not one of those. This is not a complaint or an insult to Python as a language (which I use regularly!), it is just a statement that different languages have different strengths and you should use the right tool for the job. If you know of a good Python library that handles things like shell pipelines, <(...), and automatic creation of process groups (so that signal handling does the right thing), I'd be extremely interested, because I would like to use Python for these use cases. But it's currently the wrong thing for maintainable code for this one use case, and there is a very good language that handles this use case very well and is extremely stable and widely deployed.
- coandco 8y ago
  I'd recommend checking out Plumbum (https://plumbum.readthedocs.io https://plumbum.readthedocs.io) -- at the very least, it has a solid base for easily setting up pipelines, input/output redirection, and signal handling.
  - geofft 8y ago
    Wow, thanks! I'll have to check this out.
- swinglock 8y ago
  Does the Plumbum library grant your wishes? I've not used it myself so I don't know, but its purpose is to make you "never write shell scripts again", so it might.

geofft 8y ago

By "excessive verbosity" I do mean poor readability and poor maintainability. If you're invoking 5 commands and most of your Python code is wiring up the commands to each other right, just write 5 lines of shell, don't make me pull up the subprocess docs to see if your 30 lines of Python are doing the same thing and how to make a small change without risking pipes deadlocking. Python is readable and maintainable when it's doing the things Python is suited towards doing. Running lots of external processes is not one of those. This is not a complaint or an insult to Python as a language (which I use regularly!), it is just a statement that different languages have different strengths and you should use the right tool for the job. If you know of a good Python library that handles things like shell pipelines, <(...), and automatic creation of process groups (so that signal handling does the right thing), I'd be extremely interested, because I would like to use Python for these use cases. But it's currently the wrong thing for maintainable code for this one use case, and there is a very good language that handles this use case very well and is extremely stable and widely deployed.

coandco 8y ago
I'd recommend checking out Plumbum (https://plumbum.readthedocs.io https://plumbum.readthedocs.io) -- at the very least, it has a solid base for easily setting up pipelines, input/output redirection, and signal handling.
- geofft 8y ago
  Wow, thanks! I'll have to check this out.
swinglock 8y ago
Does the Plumbum library grant your wishes? I've not used it myself so I don't know, but its purpose is to make you "never write shell scripts again", so it might.