Thanks to both Steve and Paul! I actually come from a PHP background, and I'm learning Python, oddly enough, as a result of recently purchasing a USB Flash Drive, and through wanting to be able to carry a portable programming language on the drive so that I have the capability of developing / using useful code wherever I happen to be (I'm actually using Movable Python http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/movpy/ - I hope it's not lacking in any fundamental way).
To be honest, I could have achieved the same result more gracefully in PHP (and I know that will cause some eyebrows to arch over the suggestion that anything can be done gracefully in PHP), but that's simply because I'm very comfortable with its syntax and with writing economical code in it, not because it's actually well-suited to that type of task. I'm already working through Dive Into Python, which seems to be a good starting place. Thankfully, I'm comfortable with OO concepts, at least in how they are expressed in PHP5, so I'm not entirely lost in unfamiliar territory with those aspects of Python. My big learning curve will come, I suspect, when I move into creating GUI apps with Python and wxPython, since that's my end goal - to be able to carry several self-developed applications on my Flash Drive that aren't dependent on any resources not found on the Flash Drive. But, you have to learn to crawl before you can learn to code, so approaching basic tasks like the one in my first attempt at a practical application of Python are a good way to begin. Thanks to both for your comments and advice! Much warmth, planetthoughtful -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
