if you are familiar with other common shell script languagesit might be useful to see how python compares here is simple script in unix shell language called csh that mails all the files in the current working directory with suffix of py ( all python source filesto hopefully fictitious address#!/bin/csh foreach (pyecho $ mail eric@halfabee com - $ $ end an equivalent python script looks similar#!/usr/bin/python import osglob for in glob glob('py')print(xos system('mail eric@halfabee com - % % (xx)but is slightly more verbose since pythonunlike cshisn' meant just for shell scriptssystem interfaces must be imported and called explicitly and since python isn' just string-processing languagecharacter strings must be enclosed in quotesas in although this can add few extra keystrokes in simple scripts like thisbeing generalpurpose language makes python better tool once we leave the realm of trivial programs we couldfor exampleextend the preceding script to do things like transfer files by ftppop up gui message selector and status barfetch messages from an sql databaseand employ com objects on windowsall using standard python tools python scripts also tend to be more portable to other platforms than csh for instanceif we used the python smtp interface module to send mail instead of relying on unix command-line mail toolthe script would run on any machine with python and an internet link (as we'll see in smtp requires only socketsand like cwe don' need to evaluate variableswhat else would you expect in free languagestandard streams