[32147] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 3412 Volume: 11
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Tue Jun 14 06:09:44 2011
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:09:08 -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, 14 Jun 2011 Volume: 11 Number: 3412
Today's topics:
Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: tadmc@seesig.invalid
Re: Regex Matching <dnlchen@gmail.com>
Re: Regex Matching <dnlchen@gmail.com>
Re: Regex Matching <jimsgibson@gmail.com>
Re: Regex Matching <jimsgibson@gmail.com>
Re: Regex Matching <tadmc@seesig.invalid>
Scherz am Rande <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Re: Scherz am Rande <uri@StemSystems.com>
Re: Scherz am Rande <tzz@lifelogs.com>
Re: Scherz am Rande <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us>
Re: Scherz am Rande <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Re: Scherz am Rande <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Re: The Forthcoder Diaries -- 2011 June 9 <mentifex@myuw.net>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:16:38 -0500
From: tadmc@seesig.invalid
Subject: Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: 1.9 $)
Message-Id: <L5ydnXWCJcNLl2rQnZ2dnUVZ5sqdnZ2d@giganews.com>
Outline
Before posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Must
- Check the Perl Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Check the other standard Perl docs (*.pod)
Really Really Should
- Lurk for a while before posting
- Search a Usenet archive
If You Like
- Check Other Resources
Posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Is there a better place to ask your question?
- Question should be about Perl, not about the application area
How to participate (post) in the clpmisc community
- Carefully choose the contents of your Subject header
- Use an effective followup style
- Speak Perl rather than English, when possible
- Ask perl to help you
- Do not re-type Perl code
- Provide enough information
- Do not provide too much information
- Do not post binaries, HTML, or MIME
Social faux pas to avoid
- Asking a Frequently Asked Question
- Asking a question easily answered by a cursory doc search
- Asking for emailed answers
- Beware of saying "doesn't work"
- Sending a "stealth" Cc copy
Be extra cautious when you get upset
- Count to ten before composing a followup when you are upset
- Count to ten after composing and before posting when you are upset
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($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.liamg\100cm.j.dat/"
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:58:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: DanielC <dnlchen@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Regex Matching
Message-Id: <c2d45764-66ec-4140-91d8-2101d5748229@z4g2000prk.googlegroups.com>
On Jun 12, 3:39=A0pm, s...@netherlands.com wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 16:49:37 -0700 (PDT), DanielC <dnlc...@gmail.com> wro=
te:
> >On Jun 11, 2:09=A0am, praveenzx <pravee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hey DanielC
>
> >> Try this one..
>
> >> #!/usr/bin/perl
>
> >> use strict;
> >> use warnings;
>
> >> my $PSNOW=3D"test.txt";
> >> open(FH, $PSNOW) or die "Can't open $PSNOW: $!";
> >> my @lines =3D <FH>;
> >> my $task=3D"AA::Task::AAAA";
>
> >> my @arglist=3Dqw(cId 2 sId 3);
> >> my $pattern =3D $task . '[^0-9]*' . join('[^0-9]*',@arglist);
>
> >> my $count =3D scalar grep { /$pattern/ } @lines;
> >> print "$count\n";
>
> >my $pattern =3D $task . '[^0-9]*' . join('[^0-9]*',@arglist) . '(\)|$)';
>
> >yes, [^0-9]* is good for this case, plus '(\)|$)' make it perfect.
>
> >Is there any better match than [^0-9]*? [^0-9]* also matches 'cId" and
> >'sId'.
>
> Sure, serialized.
>
> Either adjacent:
>
> =A0 my $pnoc =A0 =A0 =A0=3D '(?:[^,\PP]|\s)';
> =A0 my $field_sep =3D "(?:$pnoc*,$pnoc*|$pnoc+)";
> =A0 my $pattern =A0 =3D $task . $field_sep . join( $field_sep, @arglist )=
. $field_sep;
> =A0 print "\n", '-'x20, "\n$pattern\n", '-'x20;
> =A0 my @found =3D grep { /$pattern/ } @lines;
> =A0 print "\nfound ". @found. " lines:\n";
> =A0 print "$_" for (@found);
>
> Or not:
>
> =A0 my $field_sep =3D '(?:\b.*\b)';
> =A0 my $pattern =A0 =3D $task . $field_sep . join( $field_sep, @arglist )=
. $field_sep;
> =A0 print "\n", '-'x20, "\n$pattern\n", '-'x20;
> =A0 my @found =3D grep { /$pattern/ } @lines;
> =A0 print "\nfound ". @found. " lines:\n";
> =A0 print "$_" for (@found);
>
> ---------------
>
> The biggest mistake yahoo's make is they think they can throw a
> whole bunch of junk at regex and expect a fantasy to come true with .*
>
> -sln
Is ?: a ternary operator?
How come <print @found. " lines:\n"> gives the number of elements in
an array?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:58:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: DanielC <dnlchen@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Regex Matching
Message-Id: <02bc64b7-0531-480b-8dde-e38f1ae55884@34g2000pru.googlegroups.com>
On Jun 12, 4:34=A0pm, Rainer Weikusat <rweiku...@mssgmbh.com> wrote:
> DanielC <dnlc...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Jun 10, 3:58=A0pm, Rainer Weikusat <rweiku...@mssgmbh.com> wrote:
> >> DanielC <dnlc...@gmail.com> writes:
> >> > The output is expected to be "4" which means 4 lines match. However =
it
> >> > gets "5". =A0How can I make this script work?
>
> >> It works. You regexp is
>
> >> AA::Task::AAA.*cId.*2.*sId.*3
>
> >> and it matches these lines:
>
> >> > AA::Task::AAAA (cId,24,sId,13)
> >> > AA::Task::AAAA (cId,2,sId,3)
> >> > AA::Task::AAAA (cId,2,sId,3)
> >> > AA::Task::AAAA --cId 2 --sId 3
> >> > AA::Task::AAAA --cId 2 --sId 3
>
> >> A regexp matching only the last four lines would be (untested)
>
> >> AA::Task::AAA.*cId.2.*sId.3
>
> [...]
>
> > This doesn't match very well.
>
> It matches four lines of the data you provided ...
>
> > What if there is a line "AA::Task::AAAA
> > (cId,24,sId,33)" ?
>
> ... and another (untested) way to achieve the same would be
>
> my $trolling;
>
> /?{ ++$trolling =3D=3D 4 && die("Troll dich!")}/ || print;
What does this mean?
my $trolling;
/?{ ++$trolling =3D=3D 4 && die("Troll dich!")}/ || print;
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:16:37 -0700
From: Jim Gibson <jimsgibson@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Regex Matching
Message-Id: <130620111716377585%jimsgibson@gmail.com>
In article
<c2d45764-66ec-4140-91d8-2101d5748229@z4g2000prk.googlegroups.com>,
DanielC <dnlchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is ?: a ternary operator?
Not in a regex. It is an "extended pattern" that does clustering
without capturing. In this case, (?:a|b) defines a group to which
modifiers such as *, +, and ? may be applied, but the characters
matched will not be put in a capturing buffer, as they would if (a|b)
were used.
See 'perldoc perlre' and search for "Extended Patterns".
>
> How come <print @found. " lines:\n"> gives the number of elements in
> an array?
Because the concatenation operator . causes scalar context to the
expressions to which it is applied, and arrays evaluated in scalar
context return the number of elements in the array. Compare with 'print
@found;' or 'print "@found";'
See 'perldoc perlop' and search for "Additive Operators" (although
there isn't much information there).
--
Jim Gibson
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:22:04 -0700
From: Jim Gibson <jimsgibson@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Regex Matching
Message-Id: <130620111722047235%jimsgibson@gmail.com>
In article
<02bc64b7-0531-480b-8dde-e38f1ae55884@34g2000pru.googlegroups.com>,
DanielC <dnlchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 12, 4:34 pm, Rainer Weikusat <rweiku...@mssgmbh.com> wrote:
> >
> > ... and another (untested) way to achieve the same would be
> >
> > my $trolling;
> >
> > /?{ ++$trolling == 4 && die("Troll dich!")}/ || print;
>
> What does this mean?
>
> my $trolling;
> /?{ ++$trolling == 4 && die("Troll dich!")}/ || print;
Literally, it means "Increment the variable $trolling, and if the
result is equal to 4, call die to print the specified message and
terminate the program. If the result is not 4, print the contents of
the $_ variable". Practically, it means the program will print four
lines and quit. Figuratively, it means Herr Weikusat is acting like a
troll. :)
--
Jim Gibson
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:22:05 -0500
From: Tad McClellan <tadmc@seesig.invalid>
Subject: Re: Regex Matching
Message-Id: <slrnivda11.ob4.tadmc@tadbox.sbcglobal.net>
DanielC <dnlchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 12, 3:39Â pm, s...@netherlands.com wrote:
>> Â my $field_sep = '(?:\b.*\b)';
> Is ?: a ternary operator?
Yes.
But that is not ?:
That is (?: ... )
Which, as with all regex constructs, is documented in perlre.pod
=item C<(?:pattern)>
This is for clustering, not capturing; it groups subexpressions like
"()", but doesn't make backreferences as "()" does.
> How come <print @found. " lines:\n"> gives the number of elements in
> an array?
Because the name of an array gives the number of elements
when used in a scalar context like that.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4802541/scalar-and-list-context-in-perl/4805901#4805901
--
Tad McClellan
email: perl -le "print scalar reverse qq/moc.liamg\100cm.j.dat/"
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:10:42 +0100
From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Subject: Scherz am Rande
Message-Id: <8739jd8jrx.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com>
The company I work for presently employs a contractor with a
'non-abysmal Perl coding style' who adds
use warning;
use strict;
to everything because he was told that he should do
this. Unfortunately, nobody told him that standard error ouput of CGI
scripts goes to the corresponding Apache log file and I assume that -
possibly - no one told him that warning message ought to be remedied
in a suitable way, either. Because of this, his very non-abysmal code
has now written 47,731,957 'uninitialized value of $something'
messages to said Apache log file, consuming a total of 10,882,826,240
bytes of disk space (11G), completely filling up the SSD partition his
codes needs to create actually useful files on, causing that to fail
with 'no space left on device'. I've just received an e-mail asking
for help with this mysterious "yesterday it worked, nowadays, it
doesn't anymore" problem ...
Did I already mention that 'blindly following rules whose consequences
one doesn't understand' 'because everyone says so' rarely helps?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:17:52 -0400
From: "Uri Guttman" <uri@StemSystems.com>
Subject: Re: Scherz am Rande
Message-Id: <87boy14bqn.fsf@quad.sysarch.com>
no one said blindly doing anything. it helps to have skills in reading
comprehension.
so you are ignored because you deserve to be.
uri
--
Uri Guttman ------ uri@stemsystems.com -------- http://www.sysarch.com --
----- Perl Code Review , Architecture, Development, Training, Support ------
--------- Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix ---- http://bestfriendscocoa.com ---------
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:08:06 -0500
From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
Subject: Re: Scherz am Rande
Message-Id: <87oc215ifd.fsf@lifelogs.com>
On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:10:42 +0100 Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> wrote:
RW> The company I work for presently employs a contractor with a
RW> 'non-abysmal Perl coding style' who adds
RW> use warning;
RW> use strict;
RW> to everything because he was told that he should do
RW> this. Unfortunately, nobody told him that standard error ouput of CGI
RW> scripts goes to the corresponding Apache log file and I assume that -
RW> possibly - no one told him that warning message ought to be remedied
RW> in a suitable way, either.
That's annoying. I'd say that's the heart of *his* problem: not
understanding the environment and ignoring warning messages.
But that's not *your* problem.
RW> Because of this, his very non-abysmal code has now written
RW> 47,731,957 'uninitialized value of $something' messages to said
RW> Apache log file, consuming a total of 10,882,826,240 bytes of disk
RW> space (11G), completely filling up the SSD partition his codes needs
RW> to create actually useful files on, causing that to fail with 'no
RW> space left on device'.
1) if this is a production server, why wasn't this caught earlier in
testing? If it's not production, what's the big deal?
2) why did the sysadmins not notice /var was filling up?
RW> Did I already mention that 'blindly following rules whose consequences
RW> one doesn't understand' 'because everyone says so' rarely helps?
Sure, but it also helps to set up the environment correctly. *Your*
problem is that you have code in production that should not have passed
QA, and that the production environment is not monitored properly. Perl
has nothing to do with it; I've seen this happen with C, C++, and shell
scripts the same way. Fix your build+release process.
Ted
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:05:03 -0700
From: Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us>
Subject: Re: Scherz am Rande
Message-Id: <g7sic8xbvo.ln2@goaway.wombat.san-francisco.ca.us>
On 2011-06-14, Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> Fix your build+release process.
...or, at the very least, don't blame accepted coding standards for a
faulty build+release process.
--keith
--
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:31:30 +0100
From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Subject: Re: Scherz am Rande
Message-Id: <878vt4yftp.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com>
Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:10:42 +0100 Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> wrote:
>
> RW> The company I work for presently employs a contractor with a
> RW> 'non-abysmal Perl coding style' who adds
>
> RW> use warning;
> RW> use strict;
>
> RW> to everything because he was told that he should do
> RW> this. Unfortunately, nobody told him that standard error ouput of CGI
> RW> scripts goes to the corresponding Apache log file and I assume that -
> RW> possibly - no one told him that warning message ought to be remedied
> RW> in a suitable way, either.
>
> That's annoying. I'd say that's the heart of *his* problem: not
> understanding the environment and ignoring warning messages.
>
> But that's not *your* problem.
Exactly. My problem will likely be that this code is going to ship to
someone soon and what other 'unexpected features' it might develop
there remains to be determined. But this is actually besides the
point.
> RW> Because of this, his very non-abysmal code has now written
> RW> 47,731,957 'uninitialized value of $something' messages to said
> RW> Apache log file, consuming a total of 10,882,826,240 bytes of disk
> RW> space (11G), completely filling up the SSD partition his codes needs
> RW> to create actually useful files on, causing that to fail with 'no
> RW> space left on device'.
>
> 1) if this is a production server, why wasn't this caught earlier in
> testing? If it's not production, what's the big deal?
'The big deal' (or any deal) is enabling pretty useless warnings
(chances are that the code works fine in this respect since 'undef' is
really a legitimate value) because of something which is called
'Kadavergehorsam' in German which then get logged to some place no one
ever looks at, because the person who chose to use this feature didn't
even know where the produced output goes. At best, this will
accomplish exactly nothing since nobody sees the warnings. At worst,
it will cause 'puzzling technical problems' out of the blue.
What would have helped here is an actual understanding of this
facility, the uses it can be put to and also, its limitations. But "do
as I say or I'll HURT you" doesn't help people to understand.
[...]
> RW> Did I already mention that 'blindly following rules whose consequences
> RW> one doesn't understand' 'because everyone says so' rarely helps?
>
> Sure, but it also helps to set up the environment correctly. *Your*
> problem is that you have code in production that should not have passed
> QA,
And your problem is that your overly vivid imagination causes you to
see things which don't exist and to assume things which don't make
sense. But that's also besides the point.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:32:37 +0100
From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Subject: Re: Scherz am Rande
Message-Id: <878vt4dah6.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com>
Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> writes:
> On 2011-06-14, Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>> Fix your build+release process.
>
> ...or, at the very least, don't blame accepted coding standards for a
> faulty build+release process.
In this particular case, what you refer to as 'accepted coding
standard' caused warnings to essentially go by unnoticed (bad) and any
additional checks provided via the strict module to be very cumbersome
to deal with because an attempt to run the code has to be made which
will then result in an 'internal server error' output page and then,
somebody needs to go hunting for the actual error in the corresponding
error log file, while the practice of not trying to 'test' any code
which doesn't pass whatever 'static' checks perl has to offer first
prevents the first problem and leads to much shorter turnaround times
for the second: Automatically running the perl compiler with warnings
and stricture enabled on files which changed since the last check is
a fast and easy-to-use way to detect lots of trivial (and not so
trivial) errors before dealing with more sophisticated and thus, more
time-consuming, testing procedures. Out of my head, I'd say this saves
about 30s for every coding error that can be fixed at this stage and
these 'half-of-a-minutes' add up very quickly.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:43:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mentifex <mentifex@myuw.net>
Subject: Re: The Forthcoder Diaries -- 2011 June 9
Message-Id: <20089fc3-9352-4db9-9487-02b6b8e23be9@z15g2000prn.googlegroups.com>
On Jun 12, 4:12=A0pm, s...@netherlands.com wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:59:25 -0700 (PDT), Mentifex <menti...@myuw.net> wr=
ote:
> >On Jun 10, 5:15=A0am, Brian Martin
> ><brianNOS...@futuresoftware.com.auNOSPAM> wrote:
> >> Then again you could use a high level language like Perl, Python, APL =
...
>
> >> On 10/06/2011 8:17 AM, Paul Rubin wrote:
>
> >> > Mentifex<menti...@myuw.net> =A0writes:
> >> >> At one point, I had to create 8jun11T.F as a "Test" version of
> >> >> MindForth, so that I could fix the JavaScript AI in comparison with
> >> >> the Forth AI.
>
> >> > You could use both:
>
> >> > =A0 =A0http://forthfreak.net/jsforth80x25.html
>
> > Perl programmers have the opportunity to port
>
> > http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html
>
> > to run on Web servers as a resident AI Mind.
>
> > Mentifex (Arthur)
>
> Please post a sample of the Perl script your having
> problems with, along with a problem statement.
>
> -sln-
The code is not in perl but in Forth
and in JavaScript.
The code is for an artificial Mind
with artificial intelligence.
The artificial intelligence of
mind.pl has been sketched out
by Drifty the perlcoder:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
sub SeCurity;
sub SensoryInput;
sub EmotiOn;
sub ThInk;
sub FreeWill;
sub MotorOutput;
while (1) {
SeCurity();
SensoryInput();
EmotiOn();
ThInk();
FreeWill();
MotorOutput();
}
sub SeCurity {
# http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/SeCurity
} def;
sub SensoryInput {
# http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/SensoryInput
print "Press ENTER or ESCAPE key: ";
$_ =3D <STDIN>;
exit if (/^\027/);
} def;
sub EmotiOn {
# http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/EmotiOn
} def;
sub ThInk {
# http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/ThInk
} def;
sub FreeWill {
# http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/FreeWill
} def;
sub MotorOutput {
# http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/MotorOutput
} def;
#---
The code needs to be developed in perl
so that AI Minds may reside on Web servers
and absorb all the knowledge of the Web.
The mind-modules need to be online in the
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).
The AI Perlmind needs to be portable so that
one AI in Perl may copy itself from Web server
to Web server, quickly establishing a colony
of AI Minds propagating at lightning speed
across time and space and cyberspace.
Mentifex (Arthur)
--
http://mind.sourceforge.net/perl.html
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindforth.txt
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/M/ME/MENTIFEX/mind.txt
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/msg/215698ddca9bcd04
------------------------------
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Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01)
Message-Id: <null>
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------------------------------
End of Perl-Users Digest V11 Issue 3412
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