python was: transputers again was: The dissolution of Commodore 2910

My tool of first resort tends to be less uniform the more I use other tools. The habitual tool of first use may often be inappropriate.

e.g. I've recently had to try to get netcat operating sanely from within a large business application environment that knows little more about the world than its database, files and (*nix) pipes. The application was required to write directly to a known port number at an IP address. ("print" server)

I spent a couple of hours trying to get netcat to terminate by using a shell wrapper... which it'd do perfectly no matter how hard I hammered it from an interactive shell environment. But it consistently wedged inside the application environment.

Time was up! I stepped back and regained perspective. Thought hard about what had to be done and wrote a short Python hack:

#!-usr-bin-python import socket, sys

s = socket.socket(socket.AFINET,socket.SOCKSTREAM) s.connect((sys.argv1,int(sys.argv2))) s.sendall(sys.stdin.read())

Which works fairly well and is less obtuse than the shell program. The production version of course does some error handling and is more readable.

It helps to keep all your tools well-oiled. -- "Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia ASCII ribbon campaign "Laws do not persuade just because X against HTML mail they threaten." and postings Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.