Python is great, but having much "admin" type experience, I've found python to be less than Ideal when dealing with system calls and standard Input Ouput.
For example, I've written complex tools that use perforce, I've taken advantage of both regular IO and the perforce marshalled IO. Under heavy load, some of the threads in my scripts experience IO hang (Linux and WIndows) (solaris and BSD were fine). I did not get the same behavior with Perl.
Having said that I still do 99% of my utilities in python. Just be aware.
i've written some complex tools around perforce too, but i use the perforce python module and get an order of magnitude better performance than when i use popen to execute the same command (if that is what you are referring to by "regular IO and marshalled IO". my app doesn't use threads, so i can't speak to that, but i've never experienced an IO hang related to perforce.
bryan
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