[29434] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 678 Volume: 11
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Tue Jul 24 21:09:53 2007
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:09:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Tue, 24 Jul 2007 Volume: 11 Number: 678
Today's topics:
3's and 4's compliment? <savagebeaste@yahoo.com>
Re: 3's and 4's compliment? <jgibson@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
Re: @arts anno4000@radom.zrz.tu-berlin.de
Re: @arts <jurgenex@hotmail.com>
Re: @arts <bik.mido@tiscalinet.it>
Re: @arts <vronans@nowheresville.spamwall>
Re: @arts <m@rtij.nl.invlalid>
Any goog reasons not to install modules in standard per <bew_ba@gmx.net>
Re: Any goog reasons not to install modules in standard <jgibson@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
CGI::Carp::croak's behavior differs from Carp::croak's? <markhn@rpi.edu>
Re: FAQ 4.45 How do I find the first array element for <m@rtij.nl.invlalid>
Re: FAQ 4.45 How do I find the first array element for <m@rtij.nl.invlalid>
Re: Math <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>
Re: mysql DB specific primary key <tzz@lifelogs.com>
Re: retrieving usenet messages III <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid>
Serious Problem while appending an Excel file thanawala27@gmail.com
Re: Serious Problem while appending an Excel file <mritty@gmail.com>
Re: The Modernization of Emacs: keyboard shortcuts pain <xah@xahlee.org>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:19:59 -0700
From: "Steve K." <savagebeaste@yahoo.com>
Subject: 3's and 4's compliment?
Message-Id: <5gnc8mF3frmr1U1@mid.individual.net>
I was wondering, how would one go about performing 3's, 4's, ...,
compliment? I was reading about this briefly in my colleagues' advanced
mathematics book but did not have very long to study it.
I know about 1's and 2's compliment, and have never heard of any others
(3, 4, etc.)
Thanks for any information.
--
S.K
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:56:06 -0700
From: Jim Gibson <jgibson@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: 3's and 4's compliment?
Message-Id: <240720071656065190%jgibson@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
In article <5gnc8mF3frmr1U1@mid.individual.net>, Steve K.
<savagebeaste@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I was wondering, how would one go about performing 3's, 4's, ...,
> compliment? I was reading about this briefly in my colleagues' advanced
> mathematics book but did not have very long to study it.
>
> I know about 1's and 2's compliment, and have never heard of any others
> (3, 4, etc.)
>
> Thanks for any information.
I've never heard of 3's complement (sic) before either, but I did have
some luck finding some information using a search engine:
<http://xyzzy.freeshell.org/trinary/>:
"3.1.1. Negation: 3's Complement
In base 2, 1's complement is found by performing bitwise inversion. 2's
complement is obtained by adding 1 to 1's complement. Trinary is
similar. Tritwise inversion gives 2's complement, adding 1 gives 3's
complement."
Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------
Date: 24 Jul 2007 11:43:33 GMT
From: anno4000@radom.zrz.tu-berlin.de
Subject: Re: @arts
Message-Id: <5gm6v5F3f95neU1@mid.dfncis.de>
Vronans <vronans@nowheresville.spamwall> wrote in comp.lang.perl.misc:
> * The only valid gripe I've seen thus far is the original Subject line,
> which could of been a little more descriptive.
^^
Ah, that one is harder to catch than "jsut".
Anno
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:46:10 GMT
From: "Jürgen Exner" <jurgenex@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: @arts
Message-Id: <6Elpi.1125$Ok5.824@trndny02>
Wade Ward wrote:
> What dimensions does @arts have?
Oh please, arrays in Perl are _always_ linear.
If you want a more complex data structure you would use e.g. an array of
references to whatever
> I don't think the compiler can know in advance.
Well, the compiler does know because that's the way the language is defined.
> I would think that one dimension of @arts would have to be
> the difference between $first and $last.
What? Why would the size of an array be a dimension of the array?
jue
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:24:28 +0200
From: Michele Dondi <bik.mido@tiscalinet.it>
Subject: Re: @arts
Message-Id: <8akca3927fq220qfg789k6uofreqlh4spj@4ax.com>
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:46:10 GMT, "Jürgen Exner"
<jurgenex@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> What dimensions does @arts have?
>
>Oh please, arrays in Perl are _always_ linear.
>If you want a more complex data structure you would use e.g. an array of
>references to whatever
On a second thought I suspect he used the term dimension in a sense
akin to that of "unit of measure", as in "dimentional analysis". So
chances are that he may be asking about the nature of the elements in
the array.
>> I would think that one dimension of @arts would have to be
>> the difference between $first and $last.
>
>What? Why would the size of an array be a dimension of the array?
Yes, in this sense my interpretation above does less sense: anyway I
can't think of one that would do more.
Michele
--
{$_=pack'B8'x25,unpack'A8'x32,$a^=sub{pop^pop}->(map substr
(($a||=join'',map--$|x$_,(unpack'w',unpack'u','G^<R<Y]*YB='
.'KYU;*EVH[.FHF2W+#"\Z*5TI/ER<Z`S(G.DZZ9OX0Z')=~/./g)x2,$_,
256),7,249);s/[^\w,]/ /g;$ \=/^J/?$/:"\r";print,redo}#JAPH,
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:17:58 -0700
From: "Vronans" <vronans@nowheresville.spamwall>
Subject: Re: @arts
Message-Id: <bJSdnTIHXPUA5zvbnZ2dnUVZ_j2dnZ2d@wavecable.com>
Michele Dondi wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:07:40 -0700, "Vronans"
> <vronans@nowheresville.spamwall> wrote:
>
>>> Well, NO-body has ever complained in several years, and I can't
>>> remember anybody considering my posts hard to read because of bad
>>> netiquette. So I won't do what you suggest unless there's a
>>> compelling reason to do so, e.g. precisely track who's saying what.
>>
>> It seems others are able to properly attribute their quotes and I've
>> seen not-so-regular people asked to do exactly as I've asked you
>> (when
>
> Show me an instance where this happend.
Do your own research. This is by far nothing new. Unless you just came
on UseNet, you would know full well what I mean. In various groups I've
seen people who have removed some or all attributions and asked to fix
them. Again, this has been happening for years across UseNet.
It boils down to common courtesy, something you seem to be having
trouble with.
>>>>> Not hard to know recognize the last two lines as Merril's: how
>>>>> strange that he recognizes having acted like an idiot in the first
>>>>> place, before you poo^Hpped out of hammerspace to "defend" him...
>>
>> To whom belongs the above quote?
>
> To me and you should know. All quotes in the previous post are either
> mine of yours. To understand who's saying what it's enough to count
> quote signs
Now I think you are deliberately flying around the point. Yes, you could
count the quote signs, but what good does that do if you don't know WHO
wrote it in the first place (since you chopped off the attributions that
would of made that clear.)
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 15:53:57 -0700, "Wade Ward" <zaxfuuq@invalid.net>
> in <2J6dnRlDn_V7KD7bnZ2dnUVZ_v2unZ2d@comcast.com> wrote:
>
>> Believe it or not, I didn't start this thread to look like an idiot,
>> although I seem to have achieved this.
>
> WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?
Yes, he believes he has achieved it because thats the kind of responses
he got from the likes of you. Yeah, keep pretending you have no clue
what I'm talkign about, because I think you know full well.
>>> Ok, please explain me what a special var is that is not a predefined
>>> var, because then I don't know. The meaning of "predefined variable"
>>> is well defined... that of "special variable"... I don't have the
>>> slightest idea.
>>
>> Sigh. Why do you keep (intentionally?) dancing around the point? It's
>> what the OP seemed to -think- it was. Again, you refuse to try to see
>> things from HIS perspective, which is a common problem.
>
> No, I saw things from HIS perspective.
You didn't show it.
>> The first symbol I don't understand is @arts. It looks like a
>> special variable to me, as I think $_ is as well. I find no
>> reference for it in my
>
>> Bring your head back above shoulder level and get to me. If you can't
>> understand that the OP saw it as possibly special from HIS
>> point-of-view, then please quit while you're ahead because nothing
>> useful is being added to this thread.
>
> In fact, nothing useful is being added to this thread since you
> poo^Hpped in
Oh, and once again you owe no blame what so ever to that, right?
0110011001110101011000110110101101101001011011100110011100100000
0110100001111001011100000110111101100011011100100110100101110100
0110000101101100001000000110010101101100011010010111010001101001
0111001101110100001000000110000101110011011100110110100001101111
011011000110010101110011001011100010111000101110
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:58:45 +0200
From: Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid>
Subject: Re: @arts
Message-Id: <pan.2007.07.24.22.59.18@rtij.nl.invlalid>
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:42:28 +0200, Michele Dondi wrote:
>>>>> Not hard to know recognize the last two lines as Merril's: how
>>>>> strange that he recognizes having acted like an idiot in the first
>>>>> place, before you poo^Hpped out of hammerspace to "defend" him...
>>
>>To whom belongs the above quote?
>
> To me and you should know. All quotes in the previous post are either
> mine of yours. To understand who's saying what it's enough to count
> quote signs and apply a tiny bit of arithmetic mod 2, at the level of a
> child...
No, I don't know. Please attribute properly. It's the polite thing to do.
Everyone else does it.
In the case above, I know it is the nth poster before this post. Who? I
don't know. Vronans is very right to ask you to attribute properly. If
someone (like me here) responds to a thread, it gets impossible to sort
out the attributions. But without attributions, one cannot know who
contributed. Take this post. Yes, you say in this post the above quote is
by your hand, but in a normal conversation it would be impossible to
backtrace who the quote belongs to.
Please attribute properly. It's good form, but more, it makes it easier
to read your posts.
M4
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:22:32 -0700
From: bernd <bew_ba@gmx.net>
Subject: Any goog reasons not to install modules in standard perl installation?
Message-Id: <1185301352.997983.82100@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
Hello folks,
I have got kind of a "philosophical" question: I pleased the unix
administrator of the sun box on which we run our database to install a
few CPAN-modules (expecting that he will save them in the site_perl-
directory of the perl-installation shipped with the OS). He refused
this with the argument that this could have detrimental effects on the
operating system.
He suggests to install a "local" perl version for the application
login we use to administrate the database (e.g. /export/home/
<loginname>/perl). Used to deploy perl in a "standard" fashion I do
not want to fiddle around with include paths etc. (and since the box
is dedicated to host ONLY "my" database, I expect that the overall
system is taylored to the needs of the application administrators).
What do You think about the admin's suggestion and are there any
drawbacks apart from the mentioned @INC-stuff when we deviate from the
"standard" installation? (does the OS rely on the installed perl at
all or does one have to regard this as a "goody" for the admin and
possible developers?)
Looking forward to a fruitful discussion.
Cheers
Bernd
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:49:38 -0700
From: Jim Gibson <jgibson@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: Any goog reasons not to install modules in standard perl installation?
Message-Id: <240720071649381960%jgibson@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
In article <1185301352.997983.82100@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
bernd <bew_ba@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> I have got kind of a "philosophical" question: I pleased the unix
> administrator of the sun box on which we run our database to install a
> few CPAN-modules (expecting that he will save them in the site_perl-
> directory of the perl-installation shipped with the OS). He refused
> this with the argument that this could have detrimental effects on the
> operating system.
>
> He suggests to install a "local" perl version for the application
> login we use to administrate the database (e.g. /export/home/
> <loginname>/perl). Used to deploy perl in a "standard" fashion I do
> not want to fiddle around with include paths etc. (and since the box
> is dedicated to host ONLY "my" database, I expect that the overall
> system is taylored to the needs of the application administrators).
>
> What do You think about the admin's suggestion and are there any
> drawbacks apart from the mentioned @INC-stuff when we deviate from the
> "standard" installation? (does the OS rely on the installed perl at
> all or does one have to regard this as a "goody" for the admin and
> possible developers?)
>
> Looking forward to a fruitful discussion.
Your administrator is being cautious, but correct. As I recall from
discussions here many months or years ago, Sun uses Perl in systems
administration tasks, and depends upon a certain version (5.6?). You
certainly don't want to risk breaking that version.
However, there is no reason why two versions of Perl cannot be
installed on your machine. Ask your administrator to install the latest
stable version of Perl (5.8.8 according to www.perl.com) in a different
location, something like /usr/local, and install the CPAN modules you
will need there. Then, set your path so that you use this version, and
put the appropriate "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" (or whatever) line in all
of your Perl scripts to they will use that version. You or your
administrator can then keep that version up to date with no fear of
harming the version of Perl upon which your operating system depends.
--
Jim Gibson
Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:09:02 -0400
From: "Nicholas R. Markham" <markhn@rpi.edu>
Subject: CGI::Carp::croak's behavior differs from Carp::croak's?
Message-Id: <46a60823$0$29714$4c368faf@roadrunner.com>
I wonder if someone familiar with Carp and CGI::Carp could explain this
to me:
I have a module, which I use in several CGI scripts, that has its own
error function which calls croak. If I write this module to use Carp,
it works as I expect: the error is reported at the line where the script
calls into the module, not the line in the module where croak is
actually called. However, if I use CGI::Carp instead of Carp, the error
is reported at the line where croak is called. That is, with CGI::Carp,
croak doesn't seem to do anything different than die!
The code below illustrates the issue. Am I misunderstanding how
(CGI::)Carp works and/or misusing it?
#! /usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
package Foo;
use CGI::Carp; # or use Carp;
sub error ($) {
croak $_[0]; # with CGI::Carp, error is reported here
}
package main;
Foo::error 'This is the error'; # error *should* be reported here
# (and is, using plain Carp)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 01:55:01 +0200
From: Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid>
Subject: Re: FAQ 4.45 How do I find the first array element for which a condition is true?
Message-Id: <pan.2007.07.24.23.55.31@rtij.nl.invlalid>
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:22:23 +0000, anno4000 wrote:
> Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid> wrote in comp.lang.perl.misc:
>> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:30:23 +0000, anno4000 wrote:
>>
>> > brian d foy <brian.d.foy@gmail.com> wrote in comp.lang.perl.misc:
>> >> In article <1184941331.498545.290230@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>,
>> >> MrL22 <mr.leishman@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > # Do this using GREP
>> >> >
>> >> > my @people = ('Jacob Smith', 'Michael Brown', 'Joshua Smith',
>> >> > 'Matthew Cope');
>> >> > @smiths = grep(/smith/i, @people);
>> >>
>> >> The trick is to do it without doing extra work. Imagine a list with
>> >> thousands of elements. Do you really want to check every element,
>> >> even after you've found the first element?
>> >>
>> >> That's why List::Util has first(). :)
>> >
>> > Unfortunately List::Util::first is slightly broken. I returns an
>> > undefined value when there is no first element, either because the
>> > condition never matched or because the list to search is empty in the
>> > first place. It should return empty in this case. As it is, if the
>>
>> I think undef is perfectly acceptable in both cases. Besides, what kind
>> of scalar is "empty"?
>
> No scalar is empty. That's why the difference can only be detected in
> list context.
So, effectively you are saying List::Util::first should return a list
instead of a scalar?
M4
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:04:24 +0200
From: Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid>
Subject: Re: FAQ 4.45 How do I find the first array element for which a condition is true?
Message-Id: <pan.2007.07.25.00.04.56@rtij.nl.invlalid>
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:22:35 +0200, Michele Dondi wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:42:12 +0200, Martijn Lievaart
> <m@rtij.nl.invlalid> wrote:
>
>>> Unfortunately List::Util::first is slightly broken. I returns an
> ^^^^^^^^
> ^^^^^^^^
>
>>> undefined value when there is no first element, either because the
>>> condition never matched or because the list to search is empty in the
>>> first place. It should return empty in this case. As it is, if the
>>
>>I think undef is perfectly acceptable in both cases. Besides, what kind
>>of scalar is "empty"?
>
> Nope, it is broken, *slightly* broken as in: only corner cases will be
> affected, but it is:
>
> C:\temp>perl -MList::Util=first -le "(my ($f)=first {!$_} qw/a b c/)
> and print '
> false value found'"
> false value found
So you construct the list (undef) and evaluate it in scalar context,
which returns obviously true. Or am I missing something?
Maybe Util::List::first should pay attention to context, but if you mean
that, say so. That is not a corner case IMHO.
M4
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:41:06 +0000 (UTC)
From: Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>
Subject: Re: Math
Message-Id: <f86672$194k$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Brian Blackmore
<blb8@po.cwru.edu>], who wrote in article <f82pte$kl3$1@gnus01.u.washington.edu>:
> > For some unfathomable reasons, Perl uses non-invertible transformations
> > between strings and numbers. So if your handling of numbers involves
> > converting them to strings, then back, the precision will be lost.
> Yes, but I would question which programming languages don't suffer
> from this behavior?
What other programming languages with multi-representation numbers do
you know?
> As is mentioned by perlnumber, converting from
> floating point to string is performed by the C compiler,
Nope, by C RT libraries. And the for these libraries, they do it
following instructions from perl.
> whence Perl is at the mercy of the system on which it was compiled.
And this the CHOICE made by perl. It could have done the conversion
itself.
> Moreover, I must admit a bit of childish moronicity here in claiming
> that I know of no language whatsoever that stores floats with
> infinite precision, whence string conversion is always faulty.
I do not follow your usage of "whence", so cannot comment.
> Indeed, I was also thinking of something simple like 1/3, but have
> you an example of a language where "1/3"=1/3? Or are there so many
> that I'm just being dim?
Yes. E.g., see
perl -MMath::Pari=:int
Hope this helps,
Ilya
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:30:29 -0400
From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
Subject: Re: mysql DB specific primary key
Message-Id: <m2myxl932y.fsf@lifelogs.com>
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 06:29:14 -0000 pistachio <hpbenton@gmail.com> wrote:
p> Hello everyone,
p> Hopefully a quick one. I have a database in which I want to put some
p> data into from a file. I've parsed through the file got what I want
p> and am about to put it into the database. But I want to check the
p> primary key and see if it's free before I put the data in. The
p> database has gaps in the primary key sequence from deleting data, I
p> want to put data into those gaps. Is there a quick way to do this. I
p> was going to do some like :
p> 1) Go through database see where no data for primary key
p> 2) sort this number into an array
p> 3) use array to specify empty database slots.
p> Any ideas would be great esp with some code. Or how to do the 1st line
p> (not /usr/bin/perl -w for the funny ppl out there :p).
Use Rose::DB::Object or Class::DBI to automate the task. You'll save
yourself many hours of work.
Also learn about primary keys and indexing so you know why the "gaps" in
the primary keys are completely irrelevant to your application and you
shouldn't worry about filling them in. I think you are making things
too complicated unnecessarily.
Ted
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:09:55 GMT
From: "A. Sinan Unur" <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid>
Subject: Re: retrieving usenet messages III
Message-Id: <Xns9977676BF2672asu1cornelledu@127.0.0.1>
Michele Dondi <bik.mido@tiscalinet.it> wrote in
news:jnk3a3lelq55ug28bh1ses9qsea7t5gdvo@4ax.com:
> On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:01:41 -0700, "Wade Ward" <zaxfuuq@invalid.net>
> wrote:
...
>
>>What do you use when you're on windows?
>
> ActivePerl, always been fine with it. Tempted by strawberry, but most
> probably waiting for it to become more mature.
>
ActivePerl and Cygwin. As for a syntax highlighting editor, I would
recommend GVim (http://www.vim.org/). You can either get the prebuilt
binary or check out the sources from their Subversion repository and
compile it using VC Express.
Sinan
--
A. Sinan Unur <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid>
(remove .invalid and reverse each component for email address)
comp.lang.perl.misc guidelines on the WWW:
http://augustmail.com/~tadmc/clpmisc/clpmisc_guidelines.html
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:56:20 -0700
From: thanawala27@gmail.com
Subject: Serious Problem while appending an Excel file
Message-Id: <1185288980.110877.38960@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>
Hi guys,
I had a problem while writing into an Excel file.
What i want to do is:
i want to write the contents of 2 variables in one cell of the Excel
field.
to write the contents of one variable, i use
$worksheet->write_string($row, $col, $value1, $format);
this works fine.
but to write 2 variables, if i use the following code then the 2nd
variable is overwritten on the first one.
$worksheet->write_string($row, $col, $value1, $format);
$worksheet->write_string($row, $col, $value2, $format);
is there any way of appending a cell by another variable? So we can
write the first variable, n then append the second variable.
It would be nice if some1 could help me out.
Any Help is appreciated.
Thank You
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:03:47 -0700
From: Paul Lalli <mritty@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Serious Problem while appending an Excel file
Message-Id: <1185289427.538294.309320@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 24, 10:56 am, thanawal...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I had a problem while writing into an Excel file.
> What i want to do is:
> i want to write the contents of 2 variables in one cell of the Excel
> field.
>
> to write the contents of one variable, i use
> $worksheet->write_string($row, $col, $value1, $format);
> this works fine.
>
> but to write 2 variables, if i use the following code then the 2nd
> variable is overwritten on the first one.
> $worksheet->write_string($row, $col, $value1, $format);
> $worksheet->write_string($row, $col, $value2, $format);
>
> is there any way of appending a cell by another variable? So we can
> write the first variable, n then append the second variable.
>
> It would be nice if some1 could help me out.
Maybe I'm just being dense here, but what's the problem with:
$worksheet->write_string($row, $col, "$value1$value2", $format);
?
Paul Lalli
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:04:12 -0700
From: Xah Lee <xah@xahlee.org>
Subject: Re: The Modernization of Emacs: keyboard shortcuts pain
Message-Id: <1185282252.520022.20780@z28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>
Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful
Xah Lee, 2007-07
A important aspect in designing keyboard shortcuts is to have keyboard
shortcuts for those most frequently used commands, and, the most
frequently used commands should have most easily-pressed keystrokes.
For example, they should be on the home row.
Emacs's keyboard shortcut set is very inefficient, largely because,
Emacs's keyboard shortcuts are designed with a keyboard that
practically has the Ctrl and Alt key positions swapped.
[image: Space Cadet keyboard]
above: The Space-cadet keyboard (Source=E2=86=97, 2007-07) .
The common keyboard used around emacs era in the 1980s are those
keyboards from Lisp Machines=E2=86=97. (see Space-cadet keyboard=E2=86=97) =
The
keyboard on lisp machines have the Control key right besides the space
bar (similar to the position of Alt keys on PC keyboards), and Meta to
the left of Control. So, the Control key is right under the thumb, and
the Meta is secondary to Control. This is why, the shortcuts for the
most used commands in emacs involve the Control key instead of the
Meta key. (e.g. The cursor movements: C-p, C-n, C-f, C-b, C-a, C-e,
the cut/paste/undo C-w, C-y, C-/, the kill-line C-k, the mark C-SPC,
the search C-s.) Lisp Machine's keyboards fell out of use alone with
Lisp Machines. Since the 1990s, the IBM PC keyboard=E2=86=97 (and its
decedents) becomes the most popular and is used by more than 99% of
personal computers today. The PC keyboard does not have Meta key but
have Alt instead, which is practically used as Meta for Emacs. The
Ctrl and Alt key's position are essentially swapped from the Control
and Meta on the Lisp Machine's keyboards. Emacs however, did not
change its keyboard shortcut set by switching the commands that are
mapped to the Control and Meta keys. This makes emacs keyboard
shortcuts very painful, and the frequent need to press the far-away
Control key makes the Emacs Pinky syndrome. (Many emacs-using
programer celebrities have injured their hands with emacs. (e.g.
Richard Stallman=E2=86=97, Jamie Zawinski=E2=86=97), and emacs's Ctrl and M=
eta
combinations are most cited as the major turn-off to potential users
among programers)
----------
This post is archived and updated at
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
=E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/
------------------------------
Date: 6 Apr 2001 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Users-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01)
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End of Perl-Users Digest V11 Issue 678
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