Basically some of the most common code ideas are welcomed here. you probably want python as a shell. Here's some tips: TableOfContents

Hacks

general ideas

for all your code,

lack of symbol for command execution

Solution: write short method names:

   1 def S(arg):
   2   """returns string of executed command arg"""
   3   return os.popen(arg).read()
   4 
   5 def SN(arg):
   6   """returns list of executed command arg"""
   7   return os.popen(arg).read().split('\n')
   8 
   9 def SP(arg):
  10   """prints string of executed command arg"""
  11   print S(arg)
  12 
  13 def SNP(arg):
  14   """prints with lines list executed command arg"""
  15   for i in SN():
  16     print i

dirname comprables

you might not know that you have improved functionality. os.path.split replaces dirname and basename returning a tuple containing both. os.path.splitext splits on the extension returning a tuple To complete the set you might want to split the path at the root, use:

   1 import re
   2 def splitroot(s):
   3   if string.find(s,"/") == -1:
   4     return '',s
   5   if s[0] == '/':
   6     s = s[1:]
   7   m = re.match("(.*?)/(.*)$",s)
   8   return m.groups()

awk comprables

simply use re. its a fuller set of regular expressions. create a wrapper function for a utility for this if you want call it inlinegrep.

Limitations

• killall functionality as seen in bash was reject by guido himself (BS explantion) "talk to maintainers of posix"