Practicing strings and generally de-rusting Python...

endi_shorten.py

# !/usr/bin/env python

from sys import argv
import string
import random

def main():
	
	if len(argv) < 2 or len(argv) > 3:
		return 'Usage: $ python {script} url opt-div\n'.format(script=argv[0])
			
	url = argv[1]
	
	if len(argv) == 3:
		div = int(argv[2])
	else:
		div = 5
	
	url_head = url[:(-1) * url[::-1].find('/', 1)]
	url_tail = url.replace(url_head, "")
	temp_list = []
	
	for i in xrange(len(url_tail) // div):
		temp_list.append(random.choice(string.letters + string.digits))
		
	short_str = ''.join(elem for elem in temp_list)
	return '\n=== Shortened url ===\n' + url_head + short_str + '\n'
	
if __name__ == "__main__":
	print main()