[9511] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 3105 Volume: 8
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Thu Jul 9 11:08:08 1998
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 98 08:00:34 -0700
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Thu, 9 Jul 1998 Volume: 8 Number: 3105
Today's topics:
ANNOUNCE: AcctInfo 1.18 Released (Jeremy D. Zawodny)
ANNOUNCE: App::Config 1.07 released (Andy Wardley)
ANNOUNCE: CGI::Cache (Broc Seib)
Re: Calling DLLs from within PERL alan_k'necht@canadalife.com
Re: Do we need lame msgs in discussions? Re : Martien V <jc@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Re: good research methods WAS Re: on the fly subs with <mark$$$stang@ncgroup.com>
Help, OLE is giving me a hard time. mad_ahmad@my-dejanews.com
Re: How do I write data to a remote server? <jc@ral1.zko.dec.com>
IPC? Shared memory, semaphores? Anyone know this stuff (-)
Re: MIME encoding Files & BLAT (-)
Re: new charter and moderator for comp.lang.perl.announ <merlyn@stonehenge.com>
Re: new charter and moderator for comp.lang.perl.announ (Clinton Pierce)
Re: new charter and moderator for comp.lang.perl.announ <quednauf@nortel.co.uk>
Re: Order form script question (-)
Re: perl 5.004.04 on AIX 4.2.1 (Darren Henderson)
Re: Perl trivia: hash definition w/o initialization? <jc@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Re: Perl trivia: hash definition w/o initialization? <tchrist@mox.perl.com>
Re: sending EOF (Mike Stok)
strict and filehandles and subroutines <pfleury@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu>
Win32: BIOS calls? (Greg Ercolano)
Win32::ODBC-problem <anagl@netway.at>
Win32::ODBC-problem <anagl@netway.at>
Win32::ODBC-problem <anagl@netway.at>
Win32::ODBC-problem <anagl@netway.at>
Win32::UserAdmin error <junk@willingham.net>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 8 Mar 97) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 14:00:32 GMT
From: jzawodn@wcnet.org (Jeremy D. Zawodny)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: AcctInfo 1.18 Released
Message-Id: <6o2ie0$l7f$1@news.neta.com>
Keywords: Perl, Unix, Accounts, Module, Upgrade
I've just uploaded the latest version of AcctInfo, a Perl module for
accessing and changing Unix user account information, to my web
site. I've applied for a spot on CPAN, so you can expect to see
releases appear there once that's all taken care of.
Until then, details and downloads are at
<http://www.wcnet.org/~jzawodn/perl/AcctInfo/>.
The latest README is included below, but you'll probably want to visit
the web site to find out more about this module if you've not seen it
before.
As usual, any feedback or volunteers are welcome. There has already
been a mention of coding support for FreeBSD.
--- begin README ---
Readme for AcctInfo 1.18
Accessing and Manipulating Unix Account Information with Perl.
Copyright (c) 1997-98, Jeremy D. Zawodny <jzawodn@wcnet.org>
Background
This is the README file for AcctInfo.pm.
The AcctInfo home page is located at:
http://www.wcnet.org/~jzawodn/perl/AcctInfo/
The current version is 1.18. There are probably bugs in the code
as well as in the documentation. If you find either, I'd
appreciate a patch or at least a mail message to let me know
what's wrong.
AcctInfo as been developed and tested on Solaris 2.5 as well
as Linux 2.0.* (Red Hat). It may well work on other platforms. If
you install it on another platform, I'd like to hear about it. If
you develop patches for that platform, I'd REALLY like to hear
about it. Send me a note.
Installation
Installing AcctInfo is an easy process.
% perl Makefile.PL
% make
% make test
% make install
Documentation
The documentation is built-in to the AcctInfo.pm module in POD
format. You can use any of the pod2* converters to translate it
to a more readable format. The three most common formats are
'man', 'html', and 'text'.
When you ran the 'make install' above, documentation should have
been installed on your system such that 'man AcctInfo' will spit
it out. Of course, you can run your favorite pod converter and
generate it in alternative formats.
Example Scripts
The following scripts are included in the examples directory. They are
provided as examples. What you do with them is your business.
expired.pl List all expired accounts.
list_users.pl List all accounts and their real names.
user_detail.pl Get all the details for one user.
change_user.pl Change a user's 'name' (gcos field)
Recent Developments
Please see the manual to read about the $EXPERIMENTAL and
$PARANOID flags as well as the Commit() method, *especially* if
you've used this module in older releases.
I've added the ability to read/update users' .forward files as
well as some of the information in /etc/passwd. The /etc/passwd
stuff is considered *experimental* and WILL NOT WORK on systems
using shadow passwords. That is the part of the code which is
currently seeing the majority of my attention, so you can expect
improvements in that area soon.
Wish List
If you're wondering what will come next in AcctInfo, see the
Wishlist file in the distribution directory.
Mailing List
There is a one-way (announcement) mailing list for AcctInfo. If
you'd like to be added, just drop me a line. My e-mail address is
<jzawodn@wcnet.org>.
Other Stuff
You'll see some other things in this directory tree. There is a
'tools' directory that I put scripts into that I use in the build
and/or documentation process.
There is also an 'old' directory that contains older stuff. I'm
not sure why you'd need any of it, but it's where I put things for
a while instead of throwing them out right away.
$Id: README,v 1.7 1998/07/06 03:29:45 jzawodn Exp $
--- end README ---
Jeremy
--
Jeremy D. Zawodny Web Geek, Perl Hacker, etc.
http://www.wcnet.org/~jzawodn/ jzawodn@wcnet.org
LOAD "LINUX",8,1
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 13:59:33 GMT
From: abw@cre.canon.co.uk (Andy Wardley)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: App::Config 1.07 released
Message-Id: <6o2ic5$l7c$1@news.neta.com>
A new version of App::Config (1.07) has been uploaded to CPAN.
This version contains a number of minor bug fixes and enhancements. See
the "Changes" file in the distribution for further details.
Extracts from the documentation are included below.
A
========================================================================
NAME
App::Config - Perl5 extension for managing global application
configuration information.
SYNOPSIS
use App::Config;
my $cfg = new App::Config;
$cfg->define("foo"); # very simple variable definition
$cfg->set("foo", 123); # trivial set/get examples
$fval = $cfg->get("foo");
$cfg->foo(456); # direct variable access
$cfg->cfg_file(".myconfigrc"); # read config file
$cfg->cmd_line(\@ARGV); # process command line
OVERVIEW
App::Config is a Perl5 module to handle global configuration
variables for perl programs. The advantages of using such a
module over the standard "global variables" approach include:
* Reduction of clutter in the main namespace.
* Default values can be specified.
* Multiple names (aliases) can refer to the same variable.
* Configuration values can be set directly from config files
and/or command line arguments.
* Data values can be automatically validated by pattern matching
(e.g. "\d+" to accept digits only) or through user-supplied
routines.
* User-defined routines can be called automatically when
configuration values are changed.
PREREQUISITES
App::Config requires Perl version 5.004 or later. If you have an
older version of Perl, please upgrade to latest version. Perl
5.004 is known to be stable and includes new features and bug
fixes over previous versions. Perl itself is available from your
nearest CPAN site (see http://www.perl.com/CPAN).
INSTALLATION
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install
The 'make install' will install the module on your system. You
may need root access to perform this task. If you install the
module in a local directory (for example, by executing "perl
Makefile.PL LIB=~/lib" in the above - see `perldoc MakeMaker'
for full details), you will need to ensure that the PERL5LIB
environment variable is set to include the location, or add a
line to your scripts explicitly naming the library location: use
lib '/local/path/to/lib';
AUTHOR
Andy Wardley, `<abw@cre.canon.co.uk>'
Web Technology Group, Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd.
App::Config is based in part on the ConfigReader module, v0.5,
by Andrew Wilcox (currently untraceable).
Thanks to all the people who have reported bugs and made
suggestions. Extra special thanks to those who sent patches:
Mik Firestone <fireston@lexmark.com>
* GLOBAL arguments
Blair Zajac <blair@gps.caltech.edu>
* getpw*() check for Win32 compatibility
REVISION
$Revision: 1.7 $
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1997,98 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd. All
Rights Reserved.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the term of the Perl Artistic License.
SEE ALSO
Andy Wardley's Home Page
http://www.kfs.org/~abw/
Canon Research Centre Europe
http://www.cre.canon.co.uk/perl/
The ConfigReader module.
The module which provided inspiration and ideas for the
development of App::Config.
--
Andy Wardley <abw@kfs.org> Signature regenerating. Please remain seated.
<abw@cre.canon.co.uk> For a good time: http://www.kfs.org/~abw/
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 13:58:37 GMT
From: bseib@purdue.edu (Broc Seib)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: CGI::Cache
Message-Id: <6o2iad$l7a$1@news.neta.com>
The module CGI::Cache should now be available on a CPAN
server near you. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html for
info about the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network if you are new
to this.
Full documentation is available as embedded pod in the module,
using perldoc. You may also see the same docs online:
http://icd.cc.purdue.edu/~bseib/pub/CGI-Cache.html
-b
CGI::Cache
==========
Copyright (c) 1998 Broc Seib. All rights reserved. This program
is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.
Broc Seib, bseib@purdue.edu
SYNOPSIS
========
use CGI::Cache;
$TTL = 6*60*60; # time to live for cache file is 6 hours
CGI::Cache::Start('/tmp/cgi_cache/sample_cachefile.html',$TTL);
print "Content-type text/html\n\n";
print "This prints to STDOUT, which will be cached.";
print "If the next visit is within 6 hours, the cached STDOUT";
print "will be served instead of executing these 'prints'.";
DESCRIPTION
===========
This module is intended to be used in a CGI script that may
benefit from caching its output. Some CGI scripts may take
longer to execute because the data needed in order to construct
the page may not be readily available. Such a script may need to
query a remote database, or may rely on data that doesn't arrive
in a timely fashion, or it may just be computationally intensive.
Nonetheless, if you can afford the tradeoff of showing older,
cached data vs. CGI execution time, then this module will perform
that function.
INSTALLATION
============
To install this package, change to the directory where you
unarchived this distribution and type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
During the 'make test', there are some tests that take a while
longer to run. While testing that caching is working, CPU times
are being recorded on some badly written code to see that
performance will actually be increased on subsequent visits.
Don't panic. It may take a couple of minutes to run, depending
on your system.
If you do not have root access on your machine, then you may
not have the ability to install this module in the standard
perl library path. You may direct the installation into your
own space, e.g.,
perl Makefile.PL LIB='/home/bseib/lib'
or perhaps the entire installation, e.g.,
perl Makefile.PL PREFIX='/home/bseib'
If you make the installation into your own directory, then
remember that you must tell perl where to search for modules
before trying to 'use' them. For example:
use lib '/home/bseib/lib';
use CGI::Cache;
The most current version of this module should be available
at your favorite CPAN site, or may be retrieved from
http://icd.cc.purdue.edu/~bseib/pub/CGI-Cache-X.XX.tar.gz
Please let me know if you are using this module. Tell me what
bugs you find or what can be done to improve it.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 14:37:49 GMT
From: alan_k'necht@canadalife.com
Subject: Re: Calling DLLs from within PERL
Message-Id: <35a4d5a4.9470628@news.worldlinx.com>
On 8 Jul 1998 14:24:19 GMT, "Uwe Honekamp" <uwe.honekamp@etas.de>
wrote:
Could you (or someone else) suggest a couple of the other alternatives
and maybe some resources where I could look for more information?
Thanks...
>alan_k'necht@canadalife.com wrote in =
><35a37466.1382828@news.worldlinx.com>...
>> Is there a way to call DLLs using PERL in a NT environment?
>
>Yes, and there's actually more than one way (as there always is :-)=20
>to do this.=20
>However, I encourage you to have a look at SWIG, the Simplified=20
>Wrapper and Interface Generator. Great tool.
>
>http://www.cs.utah.edu/~beazley/SWIG/
>
>Regards
>
>Uwe
>
>--
>
>Uwe Honekamp * ETAS GmbH * Borsigstr. 10 * D-70469 Stuttgart =20
>uwe.honekamp@etas.de * voice: ++49/(0)711/89661-143 * fax: -107
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 10:21:16 -0400
From: John Chambers <jc@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Do we need lame msgs in discussions? Re : Martien Verbruggen
Message-Id: <35A4D1DC.5EEC912C@ral1.zko.dec.com>
F.Quednau wrote:
>
> Azman Shariff wrote:
> >
> >
> > The question here is "Do we need his kind of replies to questions posed?"
> > Let's
> > face the facts.... what you know doesn't mean wha another person knows!
>
> A flame might help the relevant person to get up to date with the documentation.
>
> > Yes ... i do agree at times there are some or quiet a lot totally
> > irrelvant stupid
> > and totally frustrating messages! But can't we just ignore it? Why take
> > the trouble
> > to answer with a remark? We are helping each other, and not to flame
> > each other!
>
> Don't you think that ignoring people is far more dangerous in its implications
> than give them a flame?
> Ignoring someone means that you don't care at all, whatsoever.
Oh, nonsense! Not answering could mean any number of other things:
1. I don't know the answer, and I don't want to waste people's time by
posting a message that says "I don't know, either."
2. The news system garbled or lost the question, and I didn't see it.
3. Someone else already posted a good answer, so why should I?
4. I started an answer, got distracted, my computer crashed, and by the
time I got back to it, someone else had answered it.
5. My news server doesn't carry that newsgroup, so although I know the
answer, I never saw the question.
6. My news server carries that and 17,042 other newsgroups, and although
I know the answer, there aren't enough hours in the day to read all
questions in all newsgroups, so again I didn't see the question.
...
I routinely ignore 99.9999% of the people in the world, and most of them
routinely ignore me. I'm not about to apologize for former, and I'm
sorta happy with the latter.
(And I probably won't see any followups to this. ;-)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 10:37:53 -0400
From: "Mark Stang" <mark$$$stang@ncgroup.com>
Subject: Re: good research methods WAS Re: on the fly subs with special tag markers
Message-Id: <6o2ku4$p46$1@usenet1.interramp.com>
I fully expect to be flamed for this, but is there a cross referenced,
indexed, searchable, hyperlinked version of the perl docs? I don't mean the
html docs that cone with the distribution. As a newbie I find it very
difficult to use these docs. What I am looking for (and this is what expect
to be flamed for) is a winhelp file with th documentation, or even better, a
prog to create a winhelp file from the existing docs.
TIA,
Mark
Tad McClellan wrote in message <36s0o6.pi7.ln@localhost>...
>Dan Baker (dtbaker_@flash.net) wrote:
>: brian d foy wrote:
>
>: > actually, i'll breifly outline what i do when learning some new perl
>: > thingy. i usually don't go past 4a). it might seem cumbersome
>: > at first, but the more you practice, the better you get :)
>: -------------
>
>: thanx for outlining your methods.... it actually does help a lot! I am
>: still having trouble finding things in perldoc, and many topics aren't
>: covered too well in any one book. The other problem I keep running into
>: is that most of the books are slightly outdated by the time they are
>: printed and new features are available that are not in the books, or are
>: slightly different from one book to the next so I can't tell which is
>: *best*.
>
>
>The *best* is not a "book" at all.
>
>It is the documentation that is provided with the perl distribution.
>
>I *always* check there before resorting to (potentially outdated)
>bound books. Doing a word search on electronically stored text
>is much faster, and more accurate, than skimming through an Index
>or Table of Contents...
>
>
>perl's documentation is updated each time perl itself is updated.
>
>It simply must be more up-to-date that any book can hope to be...
>
>
>--
> Tad McClellan SGML Consulting
> tadmc@metronet.com Perl programming
> Fort Worth, Texas
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 14:05:18 GMT
From: mad_ahmad@my-dejanews.com
Subject: Help, OLE is giving me a hard time.
Message-Id: <6o2imu$s6o$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Hi, No one answered my last posting much to my dismay. please help me.
i'm still haveing problems grabbing a certain range from an Excel spreadsheet
and storing it in a Perl array object.
so far this is what i've got:
$cella = $comparesheet->Cells(2,$j)->{'Address'};
$cellb = $comparesheet->Cells(42,$j)->{'Address'};
@ourcolumn = $comparesheet->Range("$cella:$cellb")->{'Value'};
from this code, all i get is an array with it's first element being the memory
address of an array appearantly (something like ARRAY(off2338e)).
when i do:
print @$ourcolumn;
all i get from this is 4 which is just the first element of a 42-element
array. please help. am I using the totally wrong approach? i know how to
grab one cell from Excel at a time but that's too slow right now.
thanks,
Ahmad Saeed
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 10:42:49 -0400
From: John Chambers <jc@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Subject: Re: How do I write data to a remote server?
Message-Id: <35A4D6E9.60A05973@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Jonathan Feinberg wrote:
>
> joker@inlink.com (John Hocking) writes:
>
> > open(DATA,">http://www.remote.com/data/datafile.txt")
> > does not work even if the directory is given 777 permissions.
>
> This begs the question, "where on earth did you get the notion that
> this would work?"
Hey, why on earth would you expect that it wouldn't? I wrote a C
library a couple of years ago that accepted the C equivalent of this
syntax (and a few others), and it worked just fine. I was hardly
the first. Back in '82 some folks at the U of Newcastle published
some papers on their system (The Newcastle Connection) that implemented
essentially the same thing, except they used "/../" instead of "http://".
So you could call creat("/../www.remote.com/data/datafile.txt",0664),
and if you passed the permission test, you'd get a file handle that
would let you write to the file.
The above notation(s) are the most reasonable way to do the job. And
if you think it can't be made to work, you are simply showing ignorance
of the computer science literature. The way that current www libraries
ask you to do it is rather ad hoc and kludgy, and there's really no
reason that a simple open shouldn't do the job, other than that it
hasn't been implemented.
> > is there a way to use something like Net:FTP or similar to transfer
> > the files to the remote server?
>
> That's just what it's for. Install the Net modules if you haven't
> already, and read the docs for Net::FTP. It's very simple to use.
>
> #!/usr/local/bin/perl -Tw
> use Net::FTP;
> $ftp = Net::FTP->new('ftp.remote.com');
> $ftp->login('username', 'password');
> $ftp->cwd('/htdocs/data');
> $ftp->put('that.file');
> $ftp->quit;
Yeah; probably the best that can be done today, since the industry
has rejected the simple way.
There's also a serious security objection to the ftp method: It
sends passwords across the net in the clear. And, unlike doing it
by hand, where each char is typically in a separate packet, the ftp
lib will tend to send the login id and password each in a single
packet, making life very easy for someone with a sniffer.
If the industry had picked up (or deigned to notice ;-) the distributed
library approach, the permission check could be easily implemented via
a module that encrypts the packets, uses third-party authentication,
or other schemes that are much more difficult to spoof.
But for now, we seem to be stuck with things like ftp.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 14:25:41 GMT
From: root.noharvest.\@not_even\here.com (-)
Subject: IPC? Shared memory, semaphores? Anyone know this stuff??
Message-Id: <35a4d04b.40345761@nntp.idsonline.com>
Hey all...
I've been thumbing through all my perl books, and digging around at
the CPAN, but I'm still very confused about IPC and system IV shared
memory.
Maybe if I explain what I'd like to do, someone could show me an
example of something that does this or is similar. Usually I need a
good working example to really get the hang of stuff, for some reason.
I couldn't find anything like that at the CPAN.
Anyway, here's what I'm trying to do: I have a searchable database
that I created myself using Perl. The dat files are flat text,
delimited with carets, and are rather large. Thankfully, they stay
unchanged for 7 - 10 days at a time so I built a quick script to
create indexes whenever the data is modified so I can open the
"smaller" index files to get an exact byte location within the dat
file, and thus use seek to get right at the specific record.
Anyway, this is fine for medium to semi-heavy loads, but as loads
increase this starts to get slow.
What I'd like to do is have a process that stays in memory with the
contents of the index so that each process of the database interface
can simply "read" from memory or even better, access by a key/value
pair from memory. So my questions are as follows:
can I use shmget/shmread or some other function? shmget appears to
require a size when accessing the "shared memory segment", but I
wouldn't know the size until after I've retrieved the data in the
calling process.
Am I trying to do something here that could be done better over there?
(is there another, more logical way to do what I want??)
Thanks for ANY feedback....... ;)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 14:13:07 GMT
From: root.noharvest.\@not_even\here.com (-)
Subject: Re: MIME encoding Files & BLAT
Message-Id: <35a4cfb9.40199548@nntp.idsonline.com>
sTarLING <starling@umr.edu> Said this:
>
>Or, does anyone have any tips on getting the MIME tools to work with
>Win32 Perl?
>
>
>Ugh. This'd be SO much easier on a unix system...
>
And yet nobody is putting their foot down when the CEO or CTO goes out
on a drinking binge and signs away the business to some microsoft
VAR!!!
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 14:01:23 GMT
From: Randal Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com>
Subject: Re: new charter and moderator for comp.lang.perl.announce
Message-Id: <8c90m3dsyj.fsf@gadget.cscaper.com>
>>>>> "brian" == brian moore <bem@news.cmc.net> writes:
brian> (Which is what lead clpa to where it is: the charter forbade Randal
brian> from using Wisdom to post things that should go there. Further
brian> lets-write-an-all-encompasing-charter rules will lead to things not
brian> being posted, even if it should be.)
But we're still mostly where I started. I now see convincing
arguments on both sides to permit "commercial" postings. Is it even
possible to come to a consensus about this? And if not, should I just
err on too little, or too much?
--
Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying
Email: <merlyn@stonehenge.com> Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger merlyn@teleport.com)
Web: <A HREF="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/">My Home Page!</A>
Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 13:58:27 GMT
From: cpierce1@cp500.fsic.ford.com (Clinton Pierce)
Subject: Re: new charter and moderator for comp.lang.perl.announce
Message-Id: <6o2ia3$mtk1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com>
In article <slrn6q8htr.e4k.bem@thorin.cmc.net>,
bem@news.cmc.net (brian moore) writes:
>On 8 Jul 1998 17:10:16 GMT,
> Clinton Pierce <cpierce1@cp500.fsic.ford.com> wrote:
>> I'd like clarification on this part.
>>
>> Our product contains 1% Perl code...may we advertize a new release on
>> clpa? no? 50%! May we advertize now? If the Apache Project announces
>> a new server with enhanced perl support features, does that warrant an
>> announcement? Do they get a break 'cause they're in the free-source
>> movement also? Would a commercial vendor (say, Netscape) get the same
>> break?
>>
>> That part can get real ugly.
>>
>> Perhaps "commercial products which have perl as a focused part of the
>> product: development libraries, unusual ports, extensions (such as GUIs),
>> IDEs and debuggers."?
>
>How about looking at it from the opposite side: have moderators that you
>trust, and a charter that allows commercial posts if the moderator
>concurs that the information is of value to the perl community?
>This whole argument is sounding like nominating a Supreme Court judge
Don't be so defensive! Lighten up a bit. What argument? Gawd
you Perl people can be SO TOUCHY! :-) Chill, Clarence Thomas. :-)
Oh I'd trust a moderator for c.l.p.a to do the Right Thing. I can't
imagine that clpa would ever be flooded with inappropriate announcements.
Even with one of the O'Reilly 'associates' as a moderator, I'd still
trust them to do the Right Thing. Although it might be an uncomfortable
position (as Randal said earlier).
I'd just like to know what to expect. Commercials? Fine, I watch
cable TV, I know what a commercial is. I'd just rather not have the
Home Shopping Network in clpa. Or maybe that's what the moderator and
clpm wants? Fine. Just let me know in the channel guide that clpa
is going to have lots of semi-relevant commercials. We don't need a
Constitution to run a newsgroup...just an accurate TV Listing.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Clinton A. Pierce | "If you rush a Miracle Man, | http://www. |
| cpierce1@ford.com | you get rotten miracles" | dcicorp.com/ |
| fubar@ameritech.net |--Miracle Max, The Princess Bride| ~clintp |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
GCSd-s+:+a-C++UALIS++++P+++L++E---t++X+b+++DI++++G++e+>++h----r+++y+++>y*
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 15:23:48 +0100
From: "F.Quednau" <quednauf@nortel.co.uk>
Subject: Re: new charter and moderator for comp.lang.perl.announce
Message-Id: <35A4D274.1CF84E23@nortel.co.uk>
Randal Schwartz wrote:
>
> >>>>> "brian" == brian moore <bem@news.cmc.net> writes:
>
> brian> (Which is what lead clpa to where it is: the charter forbade Randal
> brian> from using Wisdom to post things that should go there. Further
> brian> lets-write-an-all-encompasing-charter rules will lead to things not
> brian> being posted, even if it should be.)
>
> But we're still mostly where I started. I now see convincing
> arguments on both sides to permit "commercial" postings. Is it even
> possible to come to a consensus about this? And if not, should I just
> err on too little, or too much?
So, it should be more of a matter of trust. The charter should be kept to a
minimum, so that the moderator has the freedom to decide if the commercial
announcement should be posted to c.l.p.a.
In this case the moderator should be allowed to be able to ask back in .misc if
future postings of a certain kind are to be allowd on perl.a.
--
Frank Quednau
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~me51fq
"With facts you can prove anything that is remotely true" - HJ Simpson
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 14:05:01 GMT
From: root.noharvest.\@not_even\here.com (-)
Subject: Re: Order form script question
Message-Id: <35a4cc11.39263716@nntp.idsonline.com>
"Bill Monti" <BillMonti@yahoo.com> Said this:
>I am a lowly (!) college student trying to do a friend a favor by making his
>web site. Part of this site involves a product order form. I have written
>a script to accept the values given in the order form itself and creates
>the extended price, tax, shipping charges and a total in a dynamically
>created page that then gets the customer's personal info. My problem is
>(simple, I'm sure, but I am sick of looking for an answer!) that I cannot
>get the dynamically created values to be in a currency-type format
>(truncated to or forced to be to two decimal places).
>
$new_sub_total = sprintf ("%.2f", $sub_total);
Here's a quick rundown on the various sprintf codes:
%s String
%c Character
%d number (decimal number)
%ld long decimal
%u unsigned decimal number
%lu long unsigned number
%x hexadecimal number
%lx Long Hex number
%o Octal number
%lo Long Octal
%f fixed point floating-point number
%e exponential floating-point number
%g compact floating-point number
"%2f" gives you {any number of whole numbers}.xx like 10.00 or 5.01 or
10000.40, etc. "%3f" would give you 10.000, and so on.
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 14:46:52 GMT
From: darren@Quint.somtel.com (Darren Henderson)
Subject: Re: perl 5.004.04 on AIX 4.2.1
Message-Id: <6o2l4s$htf$1@garnet.mint.net>
Paul Mora (pmora@ca.ibm.com) wrote:
>Put a link for libgcc.a in /lib. It usually resides somewhere in
>/usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/rs6000-ibm-aix/<version>.
Had tried that in /usr/local/lib and just tried it in /lib, same result
unfortunately.
First time I've had a problem like this with perl.
Perhaps looking at replacing the linker is the thing to do (currently the
linker is the on included with C 4.3 for aix....won't go into why I dont
use C4.3 instead of gcc other then to say I want it to compile in under a
week and the licensing software chews up tons of cpu time for some
reason) Although my feeling is that this much be something fairly simple.
Perhaps compiling it under 3.25 with gcc27x would be educational.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 09:51:59 -0400
From: John Chambers <jc@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Perl trivia: hash definition w/o initialization?
Message-Id: <35A4CAFF.6C62D17C@ral1.zko.dec.com>
Larry Rosler wrote:
> ... The following 'hash slice' approach is
> *much* faster:
>
> my %some_set;
> @some_set{@items} = (); # The elements exist but are undefined.
Cute. I've been digging around in TFM pages to see if I can find an
explanation as to why this syntax is actually legal, and what it does.
It's apparently legal, since perl5.004 accepts it. This isn't too
surprising, since perl now pretty much accepts anything with all the
bracket chars properly balanced. But there doesn't seem to be any
instance of /@.*{.*}/ (or /@.*\{.*\}/ ;-) anywhere in the man pages.
Suppose one were to run across such a line in some code without the
helpful comment. How would one learn what it does?
I'd expect to find it in "man perlsyn", but if it's there, my feeble
brain couldn't locate it. Also, pages line perldata, perlobj and
perlvar don't seem to cover it. It's easy enough to find "my" in
the man pages. But how does one go about looking up a syntactic
thingy like this that doesn't contain any keywords? (And is *that*
documented somewhere that I haven't yet spotted. ;-)
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 14:16:47 GMT
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>
Subject: Re: Perl trivia: hash definition w/o initialization?
Message-Id: <6o2jcf$72j$1@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
In comp.lang.perl.misc,
jc@eddie.mit.edu writes:
:But there doesn't seem to be any
:instance of /@.*{.*}/ (or /@.*\{.*\}/ ;-) anywhere in the man pages.
:Suppose one were to run across such a line in some code without the
:helpful comment. How would one learn what it does?
man perldata
--
USER: the word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot"
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1998 14:23:36 GMT
From: mike@stok.co.uk (Mike Stok)
Subject: Re: sending EOF
Message-Id: <6o2jp8$ckp@news-central.tiac.net>
In article <35A468AC.93B024EA@emw.ericsson.se>,
Robert Rehammar <Robert.Rehammar@emw.ericsson.se> wrote:
>I'm writing a perlscript witch is to send an e-mail with sendmail. This
>works becaus I prints a ".\n" to sendmail, bur I read in tha man-pages
>that this can be done by sending an EOF to. is \0 eq to EOF ??
\0 isn't EOF. One way to indicate end of file to sendmail is to close the
connection to it.
Hope this helps,
Mike
--
mike@stok.co.uk | The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.
http://www.stok.co.uk/~mike/ | PGP fingerprint FE 56 4D 7D 42 1A 4A 9C
http://www.tiac.net/users/stok/ | 65 F3 3F 1D 27 22 B7 41
stok@colltech.com | Collective Technologies (work)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:30:40 GMT
From: "Dr. Patrick Fleury" <pfleury@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu>
Subject: strict and filehandles and subroutines
Message-Id: <35A4D410.A9B@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu>
I am trying to pass a filehandle of an open file to a subroutine while I
am using strict and I am having some trouble with it.
Here is the situation in more detail.
I am using perl to parse a file which has several sections. Each
section has two parts, a header part and a data part. I have no
difficulty in the actual parsing code however, I have run into problems
with a technicality of syntax (I think) and I would like to ask the
assembled wisdom of the PERL community for a little help.
The idea is that I want to pass a filehandle of an open data file down
to a subroutine and do the parsing of the header there. In the sub, I
want to read a couple of text lines and sling them around to make a
another text line which I pass back to the main routine.
So, ideally, my code would look something like this.
use strict;
.
.
.
.
$prefix = getprefix(<MYFILE>);
.
.
.
.
.
.
sub getprefix
{
my( $subprefix, NEWFILEHANDLE );
NEWFILEHANDLE = $_[0];
#lotsa code here
return( $subprefix);
}
Here is where the difficulty lies. Whenever I have all three
properties, strict, filehandles and subroutines, I can't get the program
to compile. If I keep the filehandle global, everything works. If I
don't use strict, I can get it to work. If I don't use a sub, I can get
it to work.
So, what is the correct syntax for sending a filehandle of an open file
to a subroutine where it can be manipulated? I just can't seem to see
it. Am I making a syntax mistake, somewhere or is there some constraint
I do not know about?
Thanks for any help.
--
(My opinions may not necessarily be my employers opinions.)
***************************************************
Dr. Patrick Fleury pfleury@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
S-523, MC5100 pfleury@mcs.com
5841 S. Maryland Avenue Voice:(773)-702-0517
Chicago, IL 60637 Fax: (773)-702-5818
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:23:54 GMT
From: erco@netcom.com (Greg Ercolano)
Subject: Win32: BIOS calls?
Message-Id: <ercoEvtzzu.B7C@netcom.com>
Keywords: int86, BIOS
Is there a standard way (or for that matter, any way)
to invoke BIOS or 'dos interrupt' calls from within
Win32 perl?
I'm running activeware currently.
I would have figured int86() or syscall() would allow one
to do it, similar to the IBM C Compiler's int86() technique.
It is scary how this issue seems so untouched in either the
CPAN or perl/WIN32 faqs. Even searches on yahoo and infoseek
for word combos of 'perl' and 'bios' are amazingly silent.
Thanks in advance.
-greg
erco@netcom.com
--
/\_/\
|o,o|
\/ )
----mm---------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Ercolano UNIX NightOwl / Systems Programmer Digital Domain
erco@netcom.com http://3dsite.com/people/erco/ 300 Rose Ave.
Venice, CA 90291
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 16:32:58 +0200
From: andreas nagl <anagl@netway.at>
Subject: Win32::ODBC-problem
Message-Id: <35A4D49A.367970E3@netway.at>
I'm using Win32::ODBC with MSSQL-Server 6.2 on WinNT 4.0.
I can't get all entries with FetchRow() .
Is this a known problem ?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 16:34:58 +0200
From: andreas nagl <anagl@netway.at>
Subject: Win32::ODBC-problem
Message-Id: <35A4D512.918250E3@netway.at>
I'm using Win32::ODBC with MSSQL-Server 6.2 on WinNT 4.0.
I can't get all entries with FetchRow() .
Is this a known problem ?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 16:33:51 +0200
From: andreas nagl <anagl@netway.at>
Subject: Win32::ODBC-problem
Message-Id: <35A4D4CF.8E8AD67B@netway.at>
I'm using Win32::ODBC with MSSQL-Server 6.2 on WinNT 4.0.
I can't get all entries with FetchRow() .
Is this a known problem ?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 16:35:44 +0200
From: andreas nagl <anagl@netway.at>
Subject: Win32::ODBC-problem
Message-Id: <35A4D540.9E346683@netway.at>
I'm using Win32::ODBC with MSSQL-Server 6.2 on WinNT 4.0.
I can't get all entries with FetchRow() .
Is this a known problem ?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 10:38:02 -0400
From: "Gigantor" <junk@willingham.net>
Subject: Win32::UserAdmin error
Message-Id: <AC03CF4C296B26FE.BDA3421510C07BD6.6A4C589DE39811A2@library-proxy.airnews.net>
I have the latest ActiveState perl build for NT and I'm using a package
called useradmin.pm that I got out of the "Windows NT User Administration"
book.
I get this error when I try to run a script that uses the package:
Can't locate loadable object for module Win32::UserAdmin in @INC (@INC
contains: D:\SFT\Perl\5.00469\lib/MSWin32-x86 D:\SFT\Perl\5.00469\lib
D:\SFT\Perl\site\5.00469\lib/MSWin32-x86 D:\SFT\Perl\site\5.00469\lib
D:\SFT\Perl\site\lib .) at script line 4
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at script line 4.
Does anyone know what this means? Do I have to recompile something?
Tony
------------------------------
Date: 8 Mar 97 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 8 Mar 97)
Message-Id: <null>
Administrivia:
The Perl-Users Digest is a retransmission of the USENET newsgroup
comp.lang.perl.misc. For subscription or unsubscription requests, send
the single line:
subscribe perl-users
or:
unsubscribe perl-users
to almanac@ruby.oce.orst.edu.
To submit articles to comp.lang.perl.misc (and this Digest), send your
article to perl-users@ruby.oce.orst.edu.
To submit articles to comp.lang.perl.announce, send your article to
clpa@perl.com.
To request back copies (available for a week or so), send your request
to almanac@ruby.oce.orst.edu with the command "send perl-users x.y",
where x is the volume number and y is the issue number.
The Meta-FAQ, an article containing information about the FAQ, is
available by requesting "send perl-users meta-faq". The real FAQ, as it
appeared last in the newsgroup, can be retrieved with the request "send
perl-users FAQ". Due to their sizes, neither the Meta-FAQ nor the FAQ
are included in the digest.
The "mini-FAQ", which is an updated version of the Meta-FAQ, is
available by requesting "send perl-users mini-faq". It appears twice
weekly in the group, but is not distributed in the digest.
For other requests pertaining to the digest, send mail to
perl-users-request@ruby.oce.orst.edu. Do not waste your time or mine
sending perl questions to the -request address, I don't have time to
answer them even if I did know the answer.
------------------------------
End of Perl-Users Digest V8 Issue 3105
**************************************
