On Wed, 18 May 2005 11:07:57 +1200 (NZST) Steve Holdoway wrote: > Can we standardise on the task in hand rsn? Due to being very busy and > swanning off for some winter sun ( in Northumberland? ) for 2 weeks > beforehand, I need to get started now.
That is something I would need help with, being the world's worst scripter/programmer. I originally suggested something along these lines, but I am by no means stuck on this: <<Sample problem: *Take a list of directories from a file in /etc/backup/backup.conf *check for double ups, eg if there are both /usr/src and /usr/src/linux in the list, ignore the latter *recursively make a tarball of all the files in the named directories *transfer them to a directory on a server, with the protocol (ftp, scp, whatever) and directory also defined in a config file. OK that is probably a simple problem, maybe too simple. >> Having thought more about it, I wonder if some more text manipulation would be appropriate. Or perhaps some kind of retrieval of a remote web page and then writing to some local version (e.g. retrieving and parsing weather, or tv programming, or similar information, and writing it to a local web page? (I could ask for something I'd like to do at home, remote control of the heat pump units :) Carl, you have teaching experience: can you think of a suitable problem? No cheating by making it too python skewed :) Anyone else have a suitable task? Remember the idea is to have the problem solved in a variety of languages, and to present the key points in 15 minutes or thereabouts, so don't suggest rewriting apache or openoffice. -- Nick Rout
