Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard

2007-12 for me is “Python appreciation month”. Going a whole month being appreciative of it wasn’t so difficult, and was the least I could do after realising how much I had under-estimated a program written in it, particularly as that program is going a long way towards fixing the very problems with the console that I’ve been was bemoaning. I suppose this post belongs with the last one, and I could be writing about MySQL or a sed joke instead, but it is New Year’s eve, so I’ll have to hope that the blogosphere appreciates the quality if not the quantity of these posts, while I go off to a party.

While I stand by everything I’ve said about the problems with the console environment, I have tried to be open-minded enough to acknowledge its benefits. That’s not particularly hard, as I often make use of some tool that is (currently) only available on the command line or get a job done faster because it is well suited to a text- / keyboard-based system. Using the console is also getting easier and more productive, though, thanks in part to Python, strangely enough, but that’s a matter for another post. This post is about what can be achieved using just a standard console and utilities.