My work machine is on all the time, and I figured it might work well for simple tasks like text file processing:
– Take input file
– Do something with it (add information, transform text, add columns, etc)
– Save file (either overwrite old one, or create a new output file)

I used Dropboxâ??s shared folder functionality to let multiple people submit their files for processing. Your Mac will see those shared folders as local, and if you set up a cron job, you are pretty much done.

Here are some steps that can help:

• Write your script
• Create a folder on Dropbox. Share it with people who will need access
• Edit your crontab. Hereâ??s a great detailed blog post on how to do this
• Confirm itâ??s working
• Sit back and relax, as your work is done :)

Note: remember to use absolute paths for your scripts and if youâ??re passing file/folder paths as parameters, make sure those paths are also absolute.

Hereâ??s my example:

0,30 8,19 * * 1-5 python /Users/[name]/Dropbox/script.py 
/Users/[name]/[folder]/*.csv

This runs the script every half hour, between the hours of 8am and 7pm, Monday-Friday and processes all .csv files in the designated Dropbox folder.

And here’s a simplified Python script, maybe some will find it helpful.

import csv
import sys
import os.path

for filename in sys.argv[1:]:
    
  # don't need to process my example file 
  # or anything with the _out in the file name, 
  # since my script creates them     
  if (filename.find('example.csv') == -1) and (filename.find('_out')== -1):  
  	
  	# also check if script already ran 
        # and you have _out.csv file saved in your folder
  	if os.path.isfile(filename.replace('.csv', '_out.csv')) == False:
          with open(filename) as f:
	    input = csv.reader(open(filename, 'rU'), delimiter=',', quotechar='"')
	    output = csv.writer(open(filename.replace('.csv','_out.csv'), 'ab'), 
                     delimiter=',',quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
		
	       rowcount = 0
		
		for row in input:
		  if rowcount ==  0:  # skips the first header row
		       output.writerow(row)
		       rowcount += 1 
		   
		  else:
			# do your file processing here
			output.writerow(row)
			rowcount += 1