[postgis-users] [OT] Extract data from within polygons - not in Postgis

[chlists at me.com]

Hi list,
apologies for an off-topic question, but some of you osgeo wizards  
might know an answer for my question. I need some help to do some  
geoprocessing _outside_ PostGIS using available open source tools.

I have two shapefiles - the first one containing 'master' polygons,  
the second one can contain random features (lines, polygons or  
points). I now want to iterate through all polygons of the first  
shapefile and extract the features from the second file which are  
located within a given master polygon. The extracted features should  
also get some a new attribute based on which master polygon they are  
located in. So essentially it is a  simple iteration over a 'within'  
query.

Can this be done without converting the shapefiles to a different  
format using any of the existing open source tools (ogr2ogr, geos,  
shapely)? I would prefer to use Python, and if possible, the solution  
needs to be cross-platform (OS X, Win). If not, what would be the best  
way to do this, preserving the attributes of the shapefiles?

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

TIA,
Chris