Tag Archives: python utilities howto about

Python – batteries included

Inspired by this
AND here

I’m going to do my best to either write up some examples of how to use these or link to someone/somewhere else on the
internet where someone did a better job then my grammar handicapped self can

For those to lazy to click the above liniks, the list below is a semi-complete list of command line accessible modules
to perform utility work.

So python -m calendar prints out a pretty calendar of the year, much like the GNU linux cal command line function.

  • json.tool -> pretty prints JSON Examples
  • SimpleHTTPServer -> serve the current directory over HTTP on port 8080 Examples
  • quopri / uu / binhex / base64 -> encode / decode Quoted-Printable / UUEncoded content.
  • telnetlib -> ghetto telnet client
  • filecmp -> directory entry comparison tool
  • ftplib -> ghetto FTP client
  • smtpd -> SMTP proxy
  • timeit -> command line profiling interface. Very handy
  • calendar -> prints year calendar
  • urllib -> ghetto wget Example
  • zipfile -> ghetto info-zip
  • aifc -> dumps some info about the provided aiff file (if given two paths, also copies path1 to path2)
  • cgi -> dumps a bunch of information as HTML to stdout
  • CGIHTTPRequestHandler -> same as SimpleHTTPServer except via the CGIHTTPRequestHandler: it will executes scripts it recognizes as CGI, instead of just sending them over (has not survived the transition to Python 3)
  • compileall -> compiles a tree of Python files to bytecode, has a bunch of options. Does not compile to stripped files (pyo)
  • cProfiler -> runs the provided script file (argument) under cProfiler
  • dis -> disassembles a python script Example
  • doctest -> runs doctests on the provided files (which can be python scripts or doctest files)
  • encodings.rot_13 -> rot13 encodes stdin to stdout (has not survived the transition to Python 3)
  • fileinput -> some kind of ghetto pseudo-annotate. No idea what use that thing might be of
  • formatter -> reformats the provided file argument (or stdin) to stdout: 80c paragraphs &etc
  • gzip -> ghetto gzip (or gunzip with -d), can only compress and decompress, does not delete the archive file
  • htmllib -> strips HTML tags off of an HTML file
  • imaplib -> ghetto IMAP client
  • locale -> displays current locale information
  • mimify -> converts (mail) messages to and from MIME format
  • modulefinder -> lists the modules imported by the provided script argument, and their location
  • pdb scriptfile.py -> automatically enters PDB post-mortem mode if the script crashes
    platform, displays the platform string
  • poplib -> dumps a bunch of info on a POP mailbox
  • profile -> see cProfile
  • pstats -> opens a statistics browser (for profile files)
  • pydoc -> same as the pydoc command Example
  • sgmllib -> see htmllib (as far as I can tell)
  • shlex -> displays tokenization result of the provided file argument (one token per line prefixed with Token:)
  • SimpleXMLRPCServer -> XMLRPC server for power and addition
  • telnetlib -> telnet client
  • tokenize -> dumps tokenization result of a Python file
  • webbrowser -> opens provided URL in your default web browser (options: in a new window, in a new tab)
  • whichdb -> A helpful little tool to try and tell which DB-api driver to use on a specified DB file