[31282] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 2527 Volume: 11
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Fri Jul 24 06:09:39 2009
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:09:05 -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 Fri, 24 Jul 2009 Volume: 11 Number: 2527
Today's topics:
Re: create directory in other domain <elgato.andrey@gmail.com>
DBD::Oracle, Unicode, non-UTF8-non-ASCII strings <OJZGSRPBZVCX@spammotel.com>
Format a number with any leading arbitrary character jidanni@jidanni.org
Re: Format a number with any leading arbitrary characte sln@netherlands.com
Re: Format a number with any leading arbitrary characte <derykus@gmail.com>
Re: Format a number with any leading arbitrary characte <whynot@pozharski.name>
London, July 21 (IANS) The sixth instalment of Harry Po <asim.ssat@gmail.com>
O'Reilly OSCON language round table <cartercc@gmail.com>
Re: Please suggest - Issue with comparing values <zen13097@zen.co.uk>
Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: tadmc@seesig.invalid
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:22:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrey <elgato.andrey@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: create directory in other domain
Message-Id: <c2a18279-9693-49ec-8c46-30578b8d9e82@a7g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>
On 21 =D0=B8=D1=8E=D0=BB, 15:03, linuxlover <c7eqjy...@sneakemail.com> wrot=
e:
> On 21 jul, 04:47, Andrey <elgato.and...@gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
>
> > > > Then I try to create a new directory I got error "Permission denied=
".
>
> [...]
>
> > my $dir =3D "/var/www/vhosts/site1/..../upload/test_mkdir";
> > mkdir($dir);
> > And this command makes error too:
> > if (-d $dir) ...
>
> > > > I guess there some setting in httpd.conf (or somewhere else ) that
> > > > perform that "protection".
>
> [...]
>
> > The 'upload' directory have 0777 rights. I think it is enough. Isn't
> > it?
>
> [...]
>
> > It is deep nested directory. I mean DOCUMENT_ROOT/dir1/dir2/dir3/
> > upload/test_mkdir
> > I know that 0777 isn't good. I give 0777 rights to eliminate other
> > access errors.
> > So only 'upload' directory have 0777.
>
> Apart from the permission to create a new directory in /var/www/vhosts/
> site1/..../upload/ (for which you need 'w' permission in the directory
> mode), the process that calls the mkdir also needs access to enter
> that directory, so for each step in /, /var, /var/www/, /var/www/
> vhosts/, /var/www/vhosts/site1/, /var/www/vhosts/site1/..../upload/
> you need 'x' permission.
That is the feature which I didn't know. Shame on me :)
I have set 'x' permissions to DOCUMENT_ROOT and now it works fine.
Thanks for answer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:02:05 +0200
From: "Jochen Lehmeier" <OJZGSRPBZVCX@spammotel.com>
Subject: DBD::Oracle, Unicode, non-UTF8-non-ASCII strings
Message-Id: <op.uxi8drpwmk9oye@frodo>
Hello,
I am using DBD::Oracle with a client and database characterset of AL32UTF8.
My problem is that DBD::Oracle assumes utf8-encoded strings in prepare().
If the input strings are not utf8, and contain non-ASCII characters, then
they are *not* automatically converted to utf8 by DBD::Oracle. They are
offered to Oracle as if they were utf8, and Oracle processes them even if
they are not valid, maybe even returning them to Perl as such; Perl is
then left with invalid utf8-flagged strings simply actually latin1
bytes/characters.
To be very clear: this is *not* an issue of wrong character encodings
during any time before the calls to DBI/DBD::Oracle (though it is,
afterwards).
I seem to remember, although I cannot find it now, that this behaviour
also was well documented in DBD::Oracle or at some other place, so I am
not so much complaining about DBD::Oracle (though I'm a bit miffed - this
would seem to be trivially fixable in there...).
Here is an example:
my $sql="select 'a \xe4 a' from dual"; # \xe4 is the german "a
umlaut"
diag(DBI::data_string_desc($sql)); # UTF8 off, non-ASCII, 24
characters 24 bytes
my $sth=$dbh->prepare($sql);
$sth->execute();
my ($rc)=$sth->fetchrow();
diag("is_utf8: ".utf8::is_utf8($rc)." valid:
'".utf8::valid($rc)."'"); # is_utf8: 1 valid: ''
diag(DBI::data_string_desc($rc)); # UTF8 on but INVALID encoding,
ASCII, 3 characters 5 bytes
The output:
# UTF8 off, non-ASCII, 24 characters 24 bytes
# is_utf8: 1 valid: ''
Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected non-continuation byte 0x20,
immediately after start byte 0xe4) in pattern match (m//) at
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DBI.pm line 1117.
# UTF8 on but INVALID encoding, ASCII, 3 characters 5 bytes
This also highlights one nastiness of the situation: no error or warning
whatsoever about the situation is displayed by the usual
prepare/execute/fetch calls. The "Malformed ..."-line above is from inside
DBI::data_string_desc, where the broken string is used in a regexp
(regexp's seem to be one place where this is noticed). So it's purely by
chance that there is a notice about this problem in this test script.
What to do? I have dozens, maybe 100 scripts that would be perfectly
utf8-capable except for this issue. They use proper :encoding() on their
file handles etc. . Is there some flag I can activate in DBD::Oracle or
DBI which automatically recodes "UTF8 off, non-ASCII" strings to utf8? A
simple Encode::decode("utf8",$sql) fixes the issue of course, but I am not
really looking forward to changing all those scripts, maybe missing lots
of stuff along the way or introducing errors.
We have a module that handles low level DB stuff like opening the DB
handle. So if there was a fix which could take place *once* after opening
the DB, that would be great.
Oh,
$DBD::Oracle::VERSION = '1.23';
$DBI::VERSION = "1.52";
NLS_LANG=GERMAN_GERMANY.AL32UTF8
Oracle 10
Thanks in advance!
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:24:24 +0800
From: jidanni@jidanni.org
Subject: Format a number with any leading arbitrary character
Message-Id: <h4aqcu$v1n$1@news.datemas.de>
$ perldoc -f sprintf
# Format number with up to 8 leading zeroes
$result = sprintf("%08d", $number);
OK, but how do I do
# Format number with up to 8 leading underscores
or any arbitrary character?
OK, I figured it out,
$ perl -wle '$_ = "00000050"; print; while (s/(^0*)0/$1_/) { }; print;'
00000050
______50
Geez.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:17:59 -0700
From: sln@netherlands.com
Subject: Re: Format a number with any leading arbitrary character
Message-Id: <8ruh65958mbrqnvl2miebi4gd98qflfnfe@4ax.com>
On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:24:24 +0800, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
>$ perldoc -f sprintf
> # Format number with up to 8 leading zeroes
> $result = sprintf("%08d", $number);
>OK, but how do I do
> # Format number with up to 8 leading underscores
>or any arbitrary character?
>OK, I figured it out,
>$ perl -wle '$_ = "00000050"; print; while (s/(^0*)0/$1_/) { }; print;'
>00000050
>______50
>Geez.
Yeah, that will work. For something more exotic ...
Convert the first 1-8 preceding 0's to underscores (leaving the columns intact):
perl -wle "$_ = '0000000000050'; print; s/(0{1,8})([^0])/('_' x length $1). $2/e; print;"
0000000000050
000________50
Or, same as above except truncating leading 0's greater than the 8 count (less than 8, columns intact):
perl -wle "$_ = '000000000000050'; print; s/0*?(0{1,8})([^0])/('_' x length $1). $2/e; print;"
000000000000050
________50
Notice there is no '^' start of line in there. You could add that too.
-sln
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:52:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: "C.DeRykus" <derykus@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Format a number with any leading arbitrary character
Message-Id: <d2172991-94bf-49e2-b31a-2b40c363abec@k13g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 23, 1:24=A0pm, jida...@jidanni.org wrote:
> $ perldoc -f sprintf
> =A0 =A0 # Format number with up to 8 leading zeroes
> =A0 =A0 $result =3D sprintf("%08d", $number);
> OK, but how do I do
> =A0 =A0 # Format number with up to 8 leading underscores
> or any arbitrary character?
> OK, I figured it out,
> $ perl -wle '$_ =3D "00000050"; print; while (s/(^0*)0/$1_/) { }; print;'
> 00000050
> ______50
Or more generally if you need to emulate sprintf's
padding for shorter strings such as: $_ =3D "000050":
s/^(0*)/"0" x (length($1) + 8 - length $_)/e;
--
Charles DeRykus
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:09:57 +0300
From: Eric Pozharski <whynot@pozharski.name>
Subject: Re: Format a number with any leading arbitrary character
Message-Id: <slrnh6ir5s.qco.whynot@orphan.zombinet>
On 2009-07-23, jidanni@jidanni.org <jidanni@jidanni.org> wrote:
> $ perldoc -f sprintf
> # Format number with up to 8 leading zeroes
> $result = sprintf("%08d", $number);
> OK, but how do I do
> # Format number with up to 8 leading underscores
> or any arbitrary character?
What a strange way to express thoughts. Me feels suspicious.
> OK, I figured it out,
> $ perl -wle '$_ = "00000050"; print; while (s/(^0*)0/$1_/) { }; print;'
> 00000050
> ______50
perldoc -f substr
Hint: B<substr()> returns l-value.
--
Torvalds' goal for Linux is very simple: World Domination
Stallman's goal for GNU is even simpler: Freedom
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:02:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: asim malik <asim.ssat@gmail.com>
Subject: London, July 21 (IANS) The sixth instalment of Harry Potter has given Hollywood studio Warner Bros.
Message-Id: <4968d9f2-79d8-4bcf-864a-b6cf0d937804@o9g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
'Harry Potter 6' pushes Warner revenue past $1 bn
for complete story visit ; www.enf786.blogspot.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:59:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: ccc31807 <cartercc@gmail.com>
Subject: O'Reilly OSCON language round table
Message-Id: <795de63e-42a4-425a-bfe4-75bafcbee269@32g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>
I listened to the O'Reilly OSCON language round table last night, and
found it interesting, not because of the technical discussion of the
differences between the languages, but because of the dynamic
relationships between the languages. These are my general impressions.
The two clear 'winners' were Java and Python, not necessarily because
of what they could do, but they seemed to be everyone's second choice.
The Java rep (James Turner, I believe) admitted that Java didn't do
very well in the three areas (web apps, system scripts, and embedded
apps) the round table covered, but clearly demonstrated that Java is
the current choice because of its strong architectural features. The
Python rep (Alex Martelli) made an exceptionally strong case for
Python, but was clearly playing second fiddle to Java.
Perl didn't come off looking so hot, and I really don't know why.
There was a nostalgia factor -- everyone mentioned that they had
learned and used Perl, and everyone admitted that they used Perl for
particular tasks, but I got the impression that Perl's best days were
in the past. Even the Perl rep (Jim Brandt) couldn't work up any real
enthusiasm for Perl, although he pushed all the right buttons and made
all the good points.
The most mentioned language not on the list was C. All seemed to agree
that C was the language you used to get to the bare metal. Obviously,
C isn't a 'best' overall language for open source scripting, but it's
the bedrock that underlies all the languages.
Lisp got several honorable mentions as the Perfect Language that no
one uses. Lisp obviously isn't an open source scripting language (in
the sense of Perl, Python, or Ruby) and no one suggested that Lisp was
really useful in this regard, but every time someone mentioned Lisp it
was in the sense of an idealized language that 'real' languages
couldn't approach.
Overall, the round table wasn't as advertised, a forum to discuss the
'best' language. PHP clearly is the most popular in this regard, but
only because it's an easy entry. The PHP rep (Laura Thomson) felt that
this was so. If I had to rank the winners and losers based on the
overall tone of the discussion, I would rank as follows: (1) Java, (2)
Python, (3-tie) Perl, Ruby), (5) PHP. If I had to rank them in order
of ease-of-use and popularity in terms of open source scripting, I
probably would rank them in exactly the reverse order.
CC
------------------------------
Date: 23 Jul 2009 08:42:38 GMT
From: Dave Weaver <zen13097@zen.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Please suggest - Issue with comparing values
Message-Id: <4a68227e$0$2483$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>
On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:36:34 -0700 (PDT), test <harpreet.noni@gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I have a perl file which is called from a ksh file. In this perl
> script, I have to execute a procedure and get the output parameter.
> this output paramtere(proces Date) needs to be compared with an input
> parameter(run_date). If both dates are not same, I need to exit out of
> the job. However, when I am trying to execute the procedure and
> capture the value, it always returns 0. I am unable o capture this
Which procedure always returns 0? I see no
procedures/subroutines/functions in your code.
Does the SQL you execute return a date?
> date output and compare it with the input date. I am using DBI for
> connectivity.
>
> Below is the SAMPLE script. Can you please advise
use strict;
use warnings.
> my $sth;
What is this? I dont see it used below.
>
> $db_handle = &connectDB($server, $user, $password, $database);
You don't declare $db_handle. Also, you don't need the & on
sub calls, unless you need its effects, which you don't.
my $db_handle = connectDB( $server, $user, $password, $database );
> my $extract_sql;
What is this? Doesn't seem to be used.
Please use more care when constructing sample code.
> my $date_cmp_sql ;
Why declare variables then assign to them in a separate line?
You can make your code more compact and simultaneously more
readable by doing declaration and initialisation in one line:
my $date_cmp_sql = "... etc ...";
> $date_cmp_sql = "
> DECLARE \@ReportDate DATETIME,
> \@ProcessDate DATETIME
>
> SELECT \@ReportDate ='$report_date'
>
> EXEC $db_name..GetPriorDate 1, \@ReportDate, \@ProcessDate output
> SELECT \@ProcessDate
> ";
Did you print out $date_cmp_sql here to make sure it's what you expect?
Did you cut-and-paste that output into your database frontend to see if
you get the expected output?
Learn the art of debugging - it shouldn't be difficult, either with
print statements or with the perl debugger, to find the line of code
that's causing you problems.
> my $st;
> $st = $db_handle->prepare("$date_cmp_sql") or die("Could not prepare
> for SQL statement");
again, do this in one line for clarity:
my $st = $db_handle->prepare( ... );
> $st->execute() or die localtime(time). " ---Can't excute SQL
> statement: $DBI::errstr\n";
> $err_str=$db_handle->errstr;
> $err_no=$db_handle->err;
>
> if ($err_str ne "")
> {
> print(" error \n");
> exit 1;
> }
You've already checked the execute() for errors; I think this check of
errstr is unneccessary and possibly wrong. I am not a DBI expert
though. According to the DBI docs:
The errstr() method should not be used to test for errors, use err()
for that,
> my @RptFlag = ();
> @RptFlag = $st->fetchrow_array() ;
my @RptFlag = $st->fetchrow_array();
What are the contents of @RptFlag here?
use Data::Dumper;
print "\@RptFlag = " . Dumper \@RptFlag;
> my $RprtGenrFlag = $RptFlag[0];
>
> print("RprtGenrFlag is $RprtGenrFlag \n\n");
>
>
> ##if ($Report_date eq "0")
> $run_date = $RprtGenrFlag;
> print("run_date is $run_date");
> if($RprtGenrFlag eq $run_date)
2 lines back You set $run_date = $RprtGenrFlag, now you compare
the two values - of course they will be equal!
> {
> print("two dates are equal \n");
> }
> else
> {
> print("dates are not equal \n");
> }
>
> $st->finish();
> &disconnectDB ($db_handle, $server);
As above, no '&' required:
disconnectDB( $db_handle, $server );
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:16:00 -0500
From: tadmc@seesig.invalid
Subject: Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: 1.9 $)
Message-Id: <nrudnXMEeYwtwvTXnZ2dnUVZ_qednZ2d@giganews.com>
Outline
Before posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Must
- Check the Perl Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Check the other standard Perl docs (*.pod)
Really Really Should
- Lurk for a while before posting
- Search a Usenet archive
If You Like
- Check Other Resources
Posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Is there a better place to ask your question?
- Question should be about Perl, not about the application area
How to participate (post) in the clpmisc community
- Carefully choose the contents of your Subject header
- Use an effective followup style
- Speak Perl rather than English, when possible
- Ask perl to help you
- Do not re-type Perl code
- Provide enough information
- Do not provide too much information
- Do not post binaries, HTML, or MIME
Social faux pas to avoid
- Asking a Frequently Asked Question
- Asking a question easily answered by a cursory doc search
- Asking for emailed answers
- Beware of saying "doesn't work"
- Sending a "stealth" Cc copy
Be extra cautious when you get upset
- Count to ten before composing a followup when you are upset
- Count to ten after composing and before posting when you are upset
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: 1.9 $)
This newsgroup, commonly called clpmisc, is a technical newsgroup
intended to be used for discussion of Perl related issues (except job
postings), whether it be comments or questions.
As you would expect, clpmisc discussions are usually very technical in
nature and there are conventions for conduct in technical newsgroups
going somewhat beyond those in non-technical newsgroups.
The article at:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
describes how to get answers from technical people in general.
This article describes things that you should, and should not, do to
increase your chances of getting an answer to your Perl question. It is
available in POD, HTML and plain text formats at:
http://www.rehabitation.com/clpmisc.shtml
For more information about netiquette in general, see the "Netiquette
Guidelines" at:
http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc1855.html
A note to newsgroup "regulars":
Do not use these guidelines as a "license to flame" or other
meanness. It is possible that a poster is unaware of things
discussed here. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and just
help them learn how to post, rather than assume that they do
know and are being the "bad kind" of Lazy.
A note about technical terms used here:
In this document, we use words like "must" and "should" as
they're used in technical conversation (such as you will
encounter in this newsgroup). When we say that you *must* do
something, we mean that if you don't do that something, then
it's unlikely that you will benefit much from this group.
We're not bossing you around; we're making the point without
lots of words.
Do *NOT* send email to the maintainer of these guidelines. It will be
discarded unread. The guidelines belong to the newsgroup so all
discussion should appear in the newsgroup. I am just the secretary that
writes down the consensus of the group.
Before posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Must
This section describes things that you *must* do before posting to
clpmisc, in order to maximize your chances of getting meaningful replies
to your inquiry and to avoid getting flamed for being lazy and trying to
have others do your work.
The perl distribution includes documentation that is copied to your hard
drive when you install perl. Also installed is a program for looking
things up in that (and other) documentation named 'perldoc'.
You should either find out where the docs got installed on your system,
or use perldoc to find them for you. Type "perldoc perldoc" to learn how
to use perldoc itself. Type "perldoc perl" to start reading Perl's
standard documentation.
Check the Perl Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Checking the FAQ before posting is required in Big 8 newsgroups in
general, there is nothing clpmisc-specific about this requirement.
You are expected to do this in nearly all newsgroups.
You can use the "-q" switch with perldoc to do a word search of the
questions in the Perl FAQs.
Check the other standard Perl docs (*.pod)
The perl distribution comes with much more documentation than is
available for most other newsgroups, so in clpmisc you should also
see if you can find an answer in the other (non-FAQ) standard docs
before posting.
It is *not* required, or even expected, that you actually *read* all of
Perl's standard docs, only that you spend a few minutes searching them
before posting.
Try doing a word-search in the standard docs for some words/phrases
taken from your problem statement or from your very carefully worded
"Subject:" header.
Really Really Should
This section describes things that you *really should* do before posting
to clpmisc.
Lurk for a while before posting
This is very important and expected in all newsgroups. Lurking means
to monitor a newsgroup for a period to become familiar with local
customs. Each newsgroup has specific customs and rituals. Knowing
these before you participate will help avoid embarrassing social
situations. Consider yourself to be a foreigner at first!
Search a Usenet archive
There are tens of thousands of Perl programmers. It is very likely
that your question has already been asked (and answered). See if you
can find where it has already been answered.
One such searchable archive is:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_search
If You Like
This section describes things that you *can* do before posting to
clpmisc.
Check Other Resources
You may want to check in books or on web sites to see if you can
find the answer to your question.
But you need to consider the source of such information: there are a
lot of very poor Perl books and web sites, and several good ones
too, of course.
Posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
There can be 200 messages in clpmisc in a single day. Nobody is going to
read every article. They must decide somehow which articles they are
going to read, and which they will skip.
Your post is in competition with 199 other posts. You need to "win"
before a person who can help you will even read your question.
These sections describe how you can help keep your article from being
one of the "skipped" ones.
Is there a better place to ask your question?
Question should be about Perl, not about the application area
It can be difficult to separate out where your problem really is,
but you should make a conscious effort to post to the most
applicable newsgroup. That is, after all, where you are the most
likely to find the people who know how to answer your question.
Being able to "partition" a problem is an essential skill for
effectively troubleshooting programming problems. If you don't get
that right, you end up looking for answers in the wrong places.
It should be understood that you may not know that the root of your
problem is not Perl-related (the two most frequent ones are CGI and
Operating System related), so off-topic postings will happen from
time to time. Be gracious when someone helps you find a better place
to ask your question by pointing you to a more applicable newsgroup.
How to participate (post) in the clpmisc community
Carefully choose the contents of your Subject header
You have 40 precious characters of Subject to win out and be one of
the posts that gets read. Don't waste them. Take care while
composing them, they are the key that opens the door to getting an
answer.
Spend them indicating what aspect of Perl others will find if they
should decide to read your article.
Do not spend them indicating "experience level" (guru, newbie...).
Do not spend them pleading (please read, urgent, help!...).
Do not spend them on non-Subjects (Perl question, one-word
Subject...)
For more information on choosing a Subject see "Choosing Good
Subject Lines":
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/D/DM/DMR/subjects.post
Part of the beauty of newsgroup dynamics, is that you can contribute
to the community with your very first post! If your choice of
Subject leads a fellow Perler to find the thread you are starting,
then even asking a question helps us all.
Use an effective followup style
When composing a followup, quote only enough text to establish the
context for the comments that you will add. Always indicate who
wrote the quoted material. Never quote an entire article. Never
quote a .signature (unless that is what you are commenting on).
Intersperse your comments *following* each section of quoted text to
which they relate. Unappreciated followup styles are referred to as
"top-posting", "Jeopardy" (because the answer comes before the
question), or "TOFU" (Text Over, Fullquote Under).
Reversing the chronology of the dialog makes it much harder to
understand (some folks won't even read it if written in that style).
For more information on quoting style, see:
http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/nquote.html
Speak Perl rather than English, when possible
Perl is much more precise than natural language. Saying it in Perl
instead will avoid misunderstanding your question or problem.
Do not say: I have variable with "foo\tbar" in it.
Instead say: I have $var = "foo\tbar", or I have $var = 'foo\tbar',
or I have $var = <DATA> (and show the data line).
Ask perl to help you
You can ask perl itself to help you find common programming mistakes
by doing two things: enable warnings (perldoc warnings) and enable
"strict"ures (perldoc strict).
You should not bother the hundreds/thousands of readers of the
newsgroup without first seeing if a machine can help you find your
problem. It is demeaning to be asked to do the work of a machine. It
will annoy the readers of your article.
You can look up any of the messages that perl might issue to find
out what the message means and how to resolve the potential mistake
(perldoc perldiag). If you would like perl to look them up for you,
you can put "use diagnostics;" near the top of your program.
Do not re-type Perl code
Use copy/paste or your editor's "import" function rather than
attempting to type in your code. If you make a typo you will get
followups about your typos instead of about the question you are
trying to get answered.
Provide enough information
If you do the things in this item, you will have an Extremely Good
chance of getting people to try and help you with your problem!
These features are a really big bonus toward your question winning
out over all of the other posts that you are competing with.
First make a short (less than 20-30 lines) and *complete* program
that illustrates the problem you are having. People should be able
to run your program by copy/pasting the code from your article. (You
will find that doing this step very often reveals your problem
directly. Leading to an answer much more quickly and reliably than
posting to Usenet.)
Describe *precisely* the input to your program. Also provide example
input data for your program. If you need to show file input, use the
__DATA__ token (perldata.pod) to provide the file contents inside of
your Perl program.
Show the output (including the verbatim text of any messages) of
your program.
Describe how you want the output to be different from what you are
getting.
If you have no idea at all of how to code up your situation, be sure
to at least describe the 2 things that you *do* know: input and
desired output.
Do not provide too much information
Do not just post your entire program for debugging. Most especially
do not post someone *else's* entire program.
Do not post binaries, HTML, or MIME
clpmisc is a text only newsgroup. If you have images or binaries
that explain your question, put them in a publically accessible
place (like a Web server) and provide a pointer to that location. If
you include code, cut and paste it directly in the message body.
Don't attach anything to the message. Don't post vcards or HTML.
Many people (and even some Usenet servers) will automatically filter
out such messages. Many people will not be able to easily read your
post. Plain text is something everyone can read.
Social faux pas to avoid
The first two below are symptoms of lots of FAQ asking here in clpmisc.
It happens so often that folks will assume that it is happening yet
again. If you have looked but not found, or found but didn't understand
the docs, say so in your article.
Asking a Frequently Asked Question
It should be understood that you may have missed the applicable FAQ
when you checked, which is not a big deal. But if the Frequently
Asked Question is worded similar to your question, folks will assume
that you did not look at all. Don't become indignant at pointers to
the FAQ, particularly if it solves your problem.
Asking a question easily answered by a cursory doc search
If folks think you have not even tried the obvious step of reading
the docs applicable to your problem, they are likely to become
annoyed.
If you are flamed for not checking when you *did* check, then just
shrug it off (and take the answer that you got).
Asking for emailed answers
Emailed answers benefit one person. Posted answers benefit the
entire community. If folks can take the time to answer your
question, then you can take the time to go get the answer in the
same place where you asked the question.
It is OK to ask for a *copy* of the answer to be emailed, but many
will ignore such requests anyway. If you munge your address, you
should never expect (or ask) to get email in response to a Usenet
post.
Ask the question here, get the answer here (maybe).
Beware of saying "doesn't work"
This is a "red flag" phrase. If you find yourself writing that,
pause and see if you can't describe what is not working without
saying "doesn't work". That is, describe how it is not what you
want.
Sending a "stealth" Cc copy
A "stealth Cc" is when you both email and post a reply without
indicating *in the body* that you are doing so.
Be extra cautious when you get upset
Count to ten before composing a followup when you are upset
This is recommended in all Usenet newsgroups. Here in clpmisc, most
flaming sub-threads are not about any feature of Perl at all! They
are most often for what was seen as a breach of netiquette. If you
have lurked for a bit, then you will know what is expected and won't
make such posts in the first place.
But if you get upset, wait a while before writing your followup. I
recommend waiting at least 30 minutes.
Count to ten after composing and before posting when you are upset
After you have written your followup, wait *another* 30 minutes
before committing yourself by posting it. You cannot take it back
once it has been said.
AUTHOR
Tad McClellan and many others on the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup.
--
Tad McClellan
email: perl -le "print scalar reverse qq/moc.noitatibaher\100cmdat/"
------------------------------
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)
Message-Id: <null>
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End of Perl-Users Digest V11 Issue 2527
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