the one indispensable key to becoming a text processing guru

The key isn't to master the Holy Grail text processing app, whether that be vim, UltraEdit, python, or whatever.

It's to process lots and lots of text in a results-oriented environment.

Honing key skills such as touch typing, learning how to solve problems logically, and developing basic proficiencies in a few powerful tools are critically important, but they are, in fact, secondary.

When you have to transform text under the necessity of doing it right in the eyes of others, and to do so habitually, that's when you will make significant progress on the path to gurudom.

Doubt this if you like, but the sooner you get that experience, the better off you'll be on the path.

For me, this has primarily meant that I have to get it right because my paycheck is on the line. But volunteering to build and/or fix files for an open source project on sourceforge is another perfectly good choice.

You can get a certain approximation of this by setting personal goals of writing text-based games in your programming language of choice or various other approaches, which is fine for practicing core skills. But having to crank it out and do it right for someone else's objective satisfaction will get you from Point A to Point B much more swiftly.

python 3.x

>>> print 'hell'
  File "", line 1
    print 'hell'
               ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax