Okay, so I wanted to mess around with some scripts today, and I thought, why not try to automate a few things I do regularly? I decided to work on six simple scripts to make my life a little easier. Here’s how it went down.
Brainstorming and Setup
First, I grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down some tasks I often do that seemed like good candidates for automation. I came up with a list of six things, ranging from renaming files to checking something. I decided to use the python because it is a very easy and useful language to do scripts.
I opened up my trusty text editor, created a new file for each script, I added basic structure to the top of each file, and I was ready to roll.
Script 1: The File Renamer
- The Idea: I often download a bunch of files that have messy names. I wanted a script to rename them all in a consistent way.
- The Process: I used python to rename the files. I made it add a prefix and a number to each file, so “*” became “project_*”.
- The Result: Worked like a charm! I dropped a bunch of files into a folder, ran the script, and boom – neatly renamed files.
Script 2:The File Organizer
- The Idea:The script is to move files of a specific type.
- The Process:I modified the script 1 and i used `*` to search the file *, I used `*` to move the files.
- The Result:Great!I just ran the script, and all files moved into the folder.
Script 3, 4, 5, and 6: Other Automations
The next four scripts were similar in structure. They all involved these steps:
- Identify a repetitive task.
- Figure out the command-line tools or Python libraries I needed.
- Write the script, step by step.
- Test it out, fix any bugs.
- Repeat until it worked perfectly.
I ran into a few minor issues here and there. Maybe a command didn’t work as expected, or I had a typo in my script. But I just took a deep breath, read the error messages carefully, and figured it out. It’s all part of the process!
The Wrap-Up
By the end of the day, I had six working scripts! It felt really good to take something I was doing manually and turn it into something automatic. I’m definitely going to keep exploring scripting. There’s so much you can do with it!
It wasn’t about being a coding wizard; it was about being willing to try, to experiment, and to learn from my mistakes. And honestly, it was kind of fun!
