Log files are very helpful for, well, logging I suppose. If you integrate the code below with a cursor of some variety you can document how features change or when they are created, or if certain values exist.
I use log files to document when traffic accident severity is altered, among other things. The police are constantly getting new data on traffic accidents, for example if someone is hurt really bad, then a week later the die, I have code that goes back through the records and tests each attribute of the accident, and if certain things change the log file is appended accordingly. Pushing the data to a table may make more sense in some cases so that a join could tie the info back to the map, but sometimes you just need to make some notes. My scripts often utilize logging to record the success or failure of complex geoprocessing routines.
Wrapping the logging code into a function often is a good way to handle things because you can pitch variables into the function so that maybe you always get a timestamp, but the other information reflects different items of interest.
Yours Truly, The Lorax
import os import time
#---create a logging file named "YYYYMMDD HH_MM_QualityControlLog.txt" theTime = time.strftime('%Y%m%d %H_%M') logfilename = "C:\\ProcessingLogs\\" + theTime + "_QualityControlLog.txt"
