OT: base64 decoding

[John Esak]

I've been working in Python too lately.  Just running through the beginning
book... And it is so powerful.  I think I said this a year or so ago, too.
But now, I'm actually putting together little python scripts to do things on
my PDA which is Linux based and uses python for everything.  Someone,
probably Mark, then piped up how PERL is just as good or better... Don't
remember, really.... Only thing I know is that learning python just enough
to write small scripts gets you doing more stuff on a large basis faster
than it ever happened for me in PERL.  PERL seems to be concerned with the
workings of things on a very small, granular basis, lots of string stuff and
anything you need is in there somewhere.  But, python gets you doing
pragmatic usable things faster.  Maybe, most people who use PERL (and Bill,
I know you use it lots) think it's the thing to use for anything.  I would
have thought that and tried to immerse myself in it years and years ago, but
never really actually did.  Stepping through the beginning python book
though has me doing things I understand and can use right away almost
immediately, and good God, it integrates every damn thing out there and just
*uses* it for you without you having to know the how and why of every little
function.  There is huge philosophy and community stuff out there on how and
why and what python is ... I avoid it all.  :-)  I'm just learning to make
scripts work first... And see how far it takes me. I'm already way better
off than my first attempts at PERL.  In the end run, I think it is just a
matter of what suits a person on an indiividual basis. For those of us who
cut our teeth on copying and changing Bourne scripts to accomplish what we
wanted.... Python is very, very grok-able. :-)

I think the book I went through and keep referring to is just simply
Beginning Pyton and it's an O'Reill thing.  (Watch, all the liberals out
there are falling off their chairs and grabbing there throats.... :-)  I
don't have it right next to me, but I think the author is Asher & Lutz... No
wait, it's called Learning Python.

John
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.com 
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.co
m] On Behalf Of Bill Campbell
> Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 4:30 PM
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com; 'Kenneth Brody'
> Subject: Re: OT: base64 decoding
> 
> On Thu, May 07, 2009, John Esak wrote:
> >It was me. I wrote the base64 conversion.  I needed to 
> because Mr. Mailman
> >or whatever Dave Stauble's program was called Mail Manager 
> or something like
> >that I forget...used to have a feature in it that would let you take
> >anything that was attached to an eamil as a base64 file and 
> do something
> >with it... Anything... It was a command you "named" and 
> listed in a config
> >text file somewhere on Unix. Then When any piece of mail to 
> a particular
> >named person came in, the program would detach any base64 
> attachment, and
> >give it to the command or set of commands.  First thing I 
> did was convert it
> >to regular text and then pass it into our order system.  
> Getting that code
> >now would be tough, not working for Nexus anymore.  I might have it
> >somewhere, but I doubt it. 
> >
> >I essentially copied out a small C script I got from 
> somewhere and just
> >translated it to filePro lingo....
> 
> This sort of thing is easy to do with python or perl without
> having to resort to C.  While I have written a lot of C code,
> it's very rare when I find something that cannot be done much
> more easily and quickly in python.
> 
> On the other hand, I finally got around to figuring out how to
> build multi-part e-mail messages in python instead of just using
> the ``mutt -a'' command to create the messages.
> 
> FWIW, I have been playing with OpenSolaris, and found that its
> ``mail'' command doesn't grok the -s option for subject.
> 
> Bill
> -- 
> INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
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