我喜欢Python的一个原因是它比POSIX工具更加标准化。我必须反复检查每个比特是否与其他操作系统兼容。在Linux系统上编写的程序在OSX的BSD系统上可能无法正常工作。对于Python，我只需要检查目标系统是否有足够现代的Python版本。

更棒的是，用标准Python编写的程序甚至可以在Windows上运行!

最好的选择是专门针对您的问题的工具。如果它正在处理文本文件，那么Sed、Awk和Perl是最佳竞争者。Python是一种通用动态语言。与任何通用语言一样，它支持文件操作，但这不是它的核心目的。如果我特别需要一种动态语言，我会考虑Python或Ruby。

简而言之，非常好地学习Sed和Awk，以及所有其他随*nix风格而来的好东西(所有Bash内置，grep, tr等等)。如果您感兴趣的是文本文件处理，那么您已经使用了正确的方法。

如果你的文本文件操作通常是一次性的，可能在shell提示符下完成，你从python中不会得到更好的东西。

另一方面，如果你经常不得不一遍又一遍地做同样的(或类似的)任务，并且你必须为此编写脚本，那么python是很棒的——你可以很容易地创建自己的库(你也可以用shell脚本来做，但它更麻烦)。

这是一个很简单的例子。

import popen2
stdout_text, stdin_text=popen2.popen2("your-shell-command-here")
for line in stdout_text:
  if line.startswith("#"):
    pass
  else
    jobID=int(line.split(",")[0].split()[1].lstrip("<").rstrip(">"))
    # do something with jobID

还要检查sys和getopt模块，它们是您首先需要的。

添加到前面的答案:检查pexpect模块处理交互式命令(adduser, passwd等)

截至2015年和Python 3.4的发布，现在有一个相当完整的用户交互shell: http://xon.sh/或https://github.com/scopatz/xonsh

演示视频没有显示正在使用的管道，但是在默认shell模式下支持管道。

Xonsh(“conch”)非常努力地模仿bash，因此您已经获得了肌肉记忆，例如

env | uniq | sort -r | grep PATH

or

my-web-server 2>&1 | my-log-sorter

仍然可以正常工作。

本教程相当冗长，似乎涵盖了人们通常在ash或bash提示符时所期望的大量功能:

Compiles, Evaluates, & Executes! Command History and Tab Completion Help & Superhelp with ? & ?? Aliases & Customized Prompts Executes Commands and/or *.xsh Scripts which can also be imported Environment Variables including Lookup with ${} Input/Output Redirection and Combining Background Jobs & Job Control Nesting Subprocesses, Pipes, and Coprocesses Subprocess-mode when a command exists, Python-mode otherwise Captured Subprocess with $(), Uncaptured Subprocess with $[], Python Evaluation with @() Filename Globbing with * or Regular Expression Filename Globbing with Backticks

In the beginning there was sh, sed, and awk (and find, and grep, and...). It was good. But awk can be an odd little beast and hard to remember if you don't use it often. Then the great camel created Perl. Perl was a system administrator's dream. It was like shell scripting on steroids. Text processing, including regular expressions were just part of the language. Then it got ugly... People tried to make big applications with Perl. Now, don't get me wrong, Perl can be an application, but it can (can!) look like a mess if you're not really careful. Then there is all this flat data business. It's enough to drive a programmer nuts.

进入Python、Ruby等。这些都是非常好的通用语言。它们支持文本处理，并且做得很好(尽管可能与语言的基本核心没有那么紧密地交织在一起)。但它们也可以很好地扩展，并且在一天结束时仍然有漂亮的代码。他们还发展了相当庞大的社区，有大量的图书馆，几乎可以提供任何东西。

Now, much of the negativeness towards Perl is a matter of opinion, and certainly some people can write very clean Perl, but with this many people complaining about it being too easy to create obfuscated code, you know some grain of truth is there. The question really becomes then, are you ever going to use this language for more than simple bash script replacements. If not, learn some more Perl.. it is absolutely fantastic for that. If, on the other hand, you want a language that will grow with you as you want to do more, may I suggest Python or Ruby.

不管怎样，祝你好运!