network love

This release mainly adds a new network class, IOCounters, that will return network interface statistics.
Other minor enhancements include:

Features

checksums

• Added sha256sum_data() function

srtring handling

• Added filename_sanitize() function so a string becomes a windows/linux compatible filename

file_utils

• file_utils.remove_files_on_timestamp_delta() and check_file_timestamp_delta() now accept optional alternative timestamp

misc

• Added deep_dict_update() function in order to update nested dictionaries with other nested dictionaries
• Added BytesConverter class which handles conversion between bytes/bits and their binary prefixes

network

• New IOCounters class that returns periodic network interface statistics
• probe_mtu and ping functions now allow to specify source
• added get_public_hostname() function

platform

• Added get_distro() function which returns distro flavor and version (only works on RHEL so far, help welcome)

string_handling

• Added sanitize_filename() function to clean filenames in order to work on most filesystems (win/linux/macos)

threading

• Added a simple threaded decorator for Python 2.7

Fixes

file_utils

• Fixed remove_files_on_timestamp_delta() did not properly walk directories

Generic

• Improved Python 2.7 unit tests for logger_utils and string_handling