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These environment variables can only handle text strings, as they are external to Python and have to be compatible with other programs and the rest of the system (and even with different operating systems, as Linux, Windows, macOS).

That means that any value read in Python from an environment variable will be a `str`, and any conversion to a different type or any validation has to be done in code.

 * It manages the crawling lifecycle, including initialization, execution coordination,
 * monitoring, and cleanup operations.
 *
 * <p>The crawler can operate in different modes based on command-line options:
 * <ul>
 * <li>Web crawling - crawls web sites and web content</li>
 * <li>File system crawling - crawls file systems and documents</li>

Here's a little bit of that history.

## Alternatives { #alternatives }

I have been creating APIs with complex requirements for several years (Machine Learning, distributed systems, asynchronous jobs, NoSQL databases, etc), leading several teams of developers.

As part of that, I needed to investigate, test and use many alternatives.