Python interface to swish-e
SWIG rocks!
I took a look at swish-e. It doesn't have the annoying tendency to ignore any words of three characters or less. That means I can now search for Don Box.
I also now have a direct API instead of piping queries through the shell, and having to worry about the security implications of not having escaped all the shell characters properly. This means that I can do interesting queries like mark pilgrim not "mark pilgrim".
Here's the code.