My first pass at a Python version of An old perl script reveals my inner C programmer. I've restricted the program to the simple version which does not generate the column name as local variables - first I want to get my proof of concept correct:

#!/usr/bin/python

for line in open("resume.txt"):
        line.lstrip()
        if line.startswith("!") or line.startswith("#"): continue
        (started, ended, title, company, description) = line.split(",")
        print "%s - %s: %s for %s\n\t%s\n\n", started, ended, title, company, description

It looks like it will reformat, but I've messed up the print statement:

> ./simple_1.py
%s - %s: %s for %s
        %s

1/05 present Staff Engineer Software Sun Microsystems NFS development

%s - %s: %s for %s
        %s

6/01 12/05 File System Engineer Network Appliance WAFL and NFS development

%s - %s: %s for %s
        %s

4/01 6/01 Manager Network Appliance Manager of Engineering Internal Test

%s - %s: %s for %s
        %s

10/99 4/01 System Administrator Network Appliance Perl hacker and filer administrator

I.e., I treated print like a C printf. Okay, I can try again with this one:

#!/usr/bin/python

for line in open("resume.txt"):
        line.lstrip()
        if line.startswith("!") or line.startswith("#"): continue
        (started, ended, title, company, description) = line.split(",")
        print "%s - %s: %s for %s\n\t%s\n\n" % (started, ended, title, company, description)

And get more of what I want to see:

> ./simple.py
1/05 - present: Staff Engineer Software for Sun Microsystems
        NFS development



6/01 - 12/05: File System Engineer for Network Appliance
        WAFL and NFS development



4/01 - 6/01: Manager for Network Appliance
        Manager of Engineering Internal Test



10/99 - 4/01: System Administrator for Network Appliance
        Perl hacker and filer administrator

I'm getting an extra line I don't want and I have to hard code the file to process. I can easily fix these both up:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys

for line in open(sys.argv[1]):
        line.lstrip()
        if line.startswith("!") or line.startswith("#"): continue
        (started, ended, title, company, description) = line.split(",")
        print "%s - %s: %s for %s\n\t%s\n" % (started, ended, title, company, description)

Feeling adventurous

Okay, with this simple example, I could get rid of the names in Perl and make it really simple. Can I do so in Python?

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys

for line in open(sys.argv[1]):
        line.lstrip()
        if line.startswith("!") or line.startswith("#"): continue
        print "%s - %s: %s for %s\n\t%s\n\n" % line.split(",")

No, not as I have tried:

> ./simple2.py resume.txt
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./simple2.py", line 8, in 
    print "%s - %s: %s for %s\n\t%s\n\n" % line.split(",")
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

I've got a type error, hmm, I'm going to try this by hand:

> python
>>> st1 = "This is the radio clash!"
>>> st1.split()
['This', 'is', 'the', 'radio', 'clash!']
>>>

So I have a '[]' instead of a '()'. What does that mean? It means I have a list versus a tuple. And I find a converter called strangely enough, tuple:

        print "%s - %s: %s for %s\n\t%s\n\n" % tuple(line.split(","))

And that works.