I am trying to find somebody who can give me a simple python program I can use to "program by analogy". I just want to read two CSV files and match them on several fields, manipulate some of the fields, and write a couple of output files. I come from 30 years of mainframe programming so I understand how computers work at a bits/bytes /machine language/ source vs.executable/reading core dumps level, and I can program in a lot of languages most people using Python have never even heard of, but I don't know any of the modern jargon; the Python home site is full of statements that mean nothing to me. I can't understand the descriptions of most of the software in the Python Package Index. I can't even figure out most of the descriptions of the help available in the Python community, so sending this e-mail may be highly inappropriate. Please forgive me if this is so, and take pity on a stranger in a strange land. I have done some Python programming in a module supplied by the author of software (Readerware) I bought; he takes care of all the file handling outside of the module he lets you mess with; I just manipulated selected fields he had defined. It seems like a fantastic language but I need help. My problem is that I want to do this all yesterday, and the Python text I bought is not easy to understand. I don't have time to work my way through the online Python tutorial. I've tried a couple of forums but nobody has answered my questions. A simple program with comments that say "here's where I read File A and define/map/ the fields in it" would let me learn by testing and trying things out, the same way I learned to work with the fields in the module. Peace on earth to all people of good will. Margie Spenser Pittsburgh, PA
-- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
