# basic code for downloading a bunch of files at an FTP site using Python's urllib. First I copied the file names from the web site into a text file, from which I extract the names (see below)

import urllib
import string

file = open('WOD1.txt', 'r') # opens a text file with three columns of data I copied from a web page, the middle element is the file name I want to download
urls = file.read() # read file into string
urls = string.split(urls) # split string into list
for i in range(1, len(urls), 3): # iterate through the list, getting the file name
    file_name = urls[i] # get file name
    print 'downloading',file_name 
    urllib.urlretrieve('ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/WOD01/OSD/OBS/'+file_name, 'C:\\temp\\WOD\\'+file_name) # dowlnoad the file using URL (adding file name each time) and save it under the same name in a local directroy

########################################################

#prompt user for filename
while 1:
    try:
        file_name = raw_input("Type the name of the Fasta file to parse: ")
        file = open(file_name, 'r')
    except IOError:
        print "***ERROR: No such file or directory: \"%s\". Please try again." % file_name
    else:
        file.close()
        break
        
########################################################
#This code will,let you supply filenames through commandline
if __name__ == '__main__':
	import sys
	#if no file specified, use current directory
	#else, use files specified in the command line, e.g. *.gb
	#*.gb means it will faithfully supply files that end with .gb one by one to make your list of filenames below 
	if len(sys.argv) == 1:
		filenames = os.listdir(os.curdir)
	else:
		filenames = sys.argv[1:]	#I hope you understand this, sys.argv is a list and you want everyting from second item to the end of the list
		
	#your rest of the code goes here, for example
	for filename in filenames:
		#now do something
		#you can also wrap this code in a try/except/else clause as above
		#but I'll let you do the minor changes
		--------
		--------
		--------	
########################################################
#This code pretty much can store any object, not just strings
import pickle
file = open('pickl.txt', 'w')
dict = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3, 'd':4}
pickle.dump(dict, file)
file.close()

file = open('pickl.txt', 'r+')
dict = pickle.load(file)
print dict #will output {'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'd': 4}
file.close()

		
########################################################
#This code to make a database
import anydbm

db = anydbm.open("database", 'c')
db['1'] = 'one'
db['2'] = 'two'
db['3'] = 'three'
db.close()

db = anydbm.open('database', 'r')
for key in db.keys():
	print repr(key), repr(db[key])