Add the following code to the top of a CGI Python script to enable colorized, annotated traceback formatting whenever a fatal error occurs in your script:

import cgitb; cgitb.enable()

When in development mode, this is likely more helpful than a '500 Internal Server Error'.

In Python you can use the array module to quickly convert ASCII values to a string and back again.

>>> import array
>>> array.array('B', [97, 98, 99]).tostring()
'abc'
>>> array.array('B', 'abc').tolist()
[97, 98, 99]

For more information, read Python Patterns - An Optimization Anecdote.

An essential part of any CGI written in perl that will push all the fatal errors to the browser instead of punting with the all-too-familiar 500 Internal Server error:

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

An often-used concept in shell scripting is globbing. You can use this in python, as well:

import glob

for textFile in glob.glob("*.txt"):
    # Do something with 'textFile'.

If you need your script to have access to ActiveRecord, ActiveMail, et al. you can place these directives at the top of your script:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'
require_gem 'activesupport'