R Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > alias Linus_Torvalds Linus Torvalds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To me this was a natural task for Perl. Turns out however, there's a catch. > Apple exports the file in UTF-16 to ensure anyone with Chinese characters in > their addressbook gets a legitimate Vcard file. And of course Perl somewhat > chokes on UTF. I've found several ways to do it that involve complicated > downloads and installations of Perl modules, but that defeats the purpose of > making it simple. In an ideal world you should be able to say "try this cool > script" and be done with it. Once you have to say "go to CPAN, download and > compile this module, then ..." it gets less exciting. > > I know nothing about Python except that it interests me and has interested me > since I first learned the Rekall database frontend (Linux) runs on it. I just > ordered Learning Python and if that works out satisfactorily I'm going to go > back for Programming Python. In the meantime, I thought I would pose the > question to this newsgroup: would Python be useful for a parsing exercise like > this one?
Sure, Python and Perl (and Ruby) should be equally suitable for the task, so, if Python appears more suitable by having built-in unicode capabilities, go for it. I'm a bit uncertain about the UTF-16 export though; I know some applications do use it (e.g., Microsoft Entourage), but I thought Apple's Address Book didn't, and, having just tried a VCard export from mine, it looks quite ASCII to me. Maybe you've set some kind of preference, or...? Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
