This first technical part of the book presents Python's system
programming tools -- interfaces to services in the underlying
operating system, as well as the context of an executing program. It
consists of the following chapters:
Chapter 2. This chapter is a comprehensive look at
commonly used system interface tools, and will teach you how to
process streams, files, directories, command-line arguments, shell
variables, and more. This chapter starts slowly, and is partially
meant as a reference.
Chapter 3. This chapter is an introduction to
Python's library support for running programs in parallel.
Here, you'll find coverage of threads, process forks, pipes,
signals, and the like.
Chapter 4,and Chapter 5. This is a two-chapter collection of typical
system programming examples that draw upon the material of the first
two chapters. Among other things, Python scripts here demonstrate how
to do things like split and join files, compare and copy directories,
generate web pages from templates, and launch programs and web
browsers portably. The second of these chapters focuses on advanced
file and directory examples; the first presents assorted system tools
case studies.
Although this part of the book emphasizes systems programming tasks,
the tools introduced are general-purpose, and are used often in later
chapters.
