Introduction to Part 2 of “PowerShell Scripting guide to Python”
This is the second article in “PowerShell Scripting guide to Python” blog series.
If you are new please refer to the part-1 of this blog series for Python prerequisites and to get an idea of what has been covered.
The whole idea of this series is to make to link your existing knowledge of Powershell with new concept\syntax of Python as fast as possible.
In fast-changing IT scenarios to DevOps to Future (Data Science, AI, and Machine Learning) python is a must know.
We are covering following items in this article today
Overview
- Date and Time
- Get Date and Time
- DateTime formatting
- Time Span or Time Delta
- Strings
- Single, Double and Triple quoted strings
- String interpolation or variable substitution
- Escape characters
- Common string operations
- String formatting
- Substring or string slicing
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Built-in string methods
My Book – PowerShell Scripting to Python
Date and Time
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Getting Date and Time
Retrieving date and time in PowerShell is as simple a cmdlet Get-Date or using the [datetime] type accelerator
But, Python date and time requires you to import time or datetime modules
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DateTime formatting
Both PowerShell and Python provides Date and Time formatting with formatting codes.
Please find cheatsheets to the format codes in the following links–PowerShell date time string format codes
Python date time string format codesAchieve desirable date-time formatting by utilizing these Format codes.
PowerShell-
Python-
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Time Span or Time Delta
In Powershell, a TimeSpan is a duration expressing the difference between two dates, time, or datetime.
TimeSpan can be used in multiple use cases like calculating a future or a past date
But, TimeDelta() is Python implementation of a TimeSpan which works exactly like [TimeSpan] with slightly different syntax
Strings and String Manipulations
Strings are most popular data types in Python can be created by simply enclosing characters in a single or double quote.
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Single, Double and Triple quoted strings
Single, double or triple quotes. Single quotes (‘) are used to create strings in Python, but Single Quotes are treated the same as double quotes (“) or triple-quoted string is used for creating multi-line strings.
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String interpolation or variable substitution
String interpolation or variable substitution is achieved by Double quotes in PowerShell
Python utilizes something called f-strings which were introduced in Python v3.6.
In Python, we use F-strings for variable substitution
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Escape characters
Backslash ‘\’ is a representation of Escape characters in a Python string and can be interpreted in a single, double or triple quoted strings.
Unlike Powershell which represents Escape character by backward apostrophe/grave ‘`’
PowerShell does not interpret Escape characters in Single Quotes, but only in Double quotes. -
Common string operations
Common string operations in PowerShell and Python are almost similar
Python –
PowerShell –
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String formatting
PowerShell provides a ‘-f’ operator called the Format operator to perform string formatting.
Python has a similar Built-in .format() method for formatting the strings.
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Substring or string slicing
Achieve Substring slicing or extracting from a Powershell string by
Using Range operator
Using Substring() method
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Built-in string methods
Python and PowerShell provide built-in methods for string manipulations, which are up to some extent similar in functionalities.
Powershell
Python
Hope you enjoyed reading this article and let me know your feedback.
In the Part-3 of this blog series, we would be covering Data structures – List, Tuple, Dictionary, and Loops hence, please stay tuned!
Prateek Singh
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I’m missing a Python part in 6 Substring or string slicing.
$string[11..17] -join ” # output: Prateek
–> string[11:18]
$string[25..($string.Length-1)] -join ” # output: I’m from India
–> string[25:]
$string[11..23] -join ” # slicing the string from a specific index to another
–> string[11:24]
But also
string[11:24:2]
Some improvement points:
1) # changing the case
‘hello world’.toupper() # capitalize 1st char of the string
Actually it will upper case the full string
2) print(”.join(list(‘python’)[::-1])) # reversing a string
print(‘Python'[::-1]) is much more elegant and easy to remember
3) In PS I’m missing a PadCenter