We've got a problem with our CUPS server, and the guy who might possibly be able to fix it is out for the near future. The problem itself is fixable by restarting the queue, but this requires noticing the queue is not working, then restarting it.

Now, there may be a simpler way to do this than what I'm thinking, and if there is, please kick me in the head and enlighten me.

In the page source for the list of printers, the HTML code which contains the link to the administrative page for each printer is:

<th bgcolor="#999966"\\><a href="*">{{PRINTERNAME}}</a></th>

where '*' is the location of the printer administration page. The way the page is generated, this code is on a line all by itself. The script will progressively retrieve the printer administration page for each printer on the main printer list, and if it detects the condition that requires queue restarting, will do so by triggering the link which does this, rechecking the page until the link appears for starting the queue, then does so.

I've never done regexp before, so I'd like to sanity check some stuff with all y'all before I go further. First off, on [link|http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/|this] page, it mentions a single line versus multiline mode. Am I correct in assuming that if multiline isn't enabled, no regexp hit will be returned that flows over multiple lines? If I pass my regexp function the entire web page, will it parse it one line at a time?

Any suggestions for a good regexp tutorial site? For some reason, they are conceptually strange to me.