It’s time to give back. And get back. I’ll be sharing some ideas from the Python programs I’ve written, and talk about what problems were solved. I like to share work that is as complete as possible, so in most cases you should be able to download the script and try it right away for yourself.

I’ve been Googling your blogs, your wikis, and your Stack Overflow posts for years. Grabbing a program here, a snippet there, and using it to build various scripts that prep SAP data for an Excel worksheet pivot table, dump tables from Oracle DB XE into a spreadsheet, format time card data from a restaurant POS system, sum times from an Optical Proximity Correction log file, characterize random behavior in a Critical Area simulator, construct a QA test flow for an automatic scan test pattern generation tool, and dozens of other minor tasks I’ve long forgotten. Thanks for your posts, your hints, your ideas, and your links to other helpful pages. I can only hope that a few people find my postings useful. If you like what you see, let me know.

I got into Python years ago, an unrequited Perl lover who lost patience and faith waiting for Perl 6 to make its appearance. I’ve written hundreds of Perl scripts, and it was my tool of choice for many years. Perl is a powerful, vexing language, still used very heavily in the Electronic Design Automation industry where I work. For me, I wondered what else was out there, and after taking a brief detour into the world of Ruby, I was able to conquer my ridiculous aversion to white space and arrived in the world of Python.

I’ll be sharing some ideas from the Python programs I’ve written, and talk about what problems were solved. I like to share work that is as complete as possible, so in most cases you should be able to download the script and try it right away for yourself. These scripts were originally coded for Python 2.6, they are now revised to also run both in the 2.6 and 3.7 versions. Maintaining a good Pythonic style is important, and I’ll do what I can. If you spot something in my code that could be done better, create an issue on GitHub, and I’ll do my best to correct the problem.

So sit back and let’s get ready to write some Python!

Originally posted July 3, 2009 / Updated September 20, 2019