Python: Operating System Access

Prerequisites

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course will introduce methods in Python for accessing the operating system environment (e.g. standard input, standard output, environment variables, etc). The course will cover topics such as command-line parsing in more detail than the "Python Introduction for Absolute Beginners" or "Python Introduction for Programmers".

• Prior attendance at either the "Python Introduction for Absolute Beginners" or "Python Introduction for Programmers" courses or equivalent experience.
• Those attending should be able to use a plain text editor (e.g. emacs, gedit, pico, vi) on a Unix system as might be obtained from the Emacs or Vi introductory courses.

• Obtaining data from the keyboard/standard input
• Parsing the command-line
• Accessing environment variables

Presentation/demonstration with practicals.

Python v. 3 on PWF Linux

• This course is unsuitable for those who have no experience of Python.
• As this course is part of the Scientific Computing series, the examples chosen are of most relevance to scientific programming.
• Those attending this course may also be interested in the "Python Further Topics" course.

One half day session

• Programming and Scripting
• Scientific Computing