Learning Python for Forensics

Creating our first script – unix_converter.py

Our first script will perform a common timestamp conversion that will prove useful throughout the book. Named unix_converter.py, this script converts Unix timestamps into a human readable date and time value. Unix timestamps are formatted as an integer representing the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00.

On line 1, we import the datetime library, which has a utcfromtimestamp() function to convert Unix timestamps into datetime objects. On lines 3 through 6, we define variables that store documentation details relevant to the script. While this might be overkill for a small example, it is good to get in the habit of documenting your code early. Documentation can help maintain sanity when the ...