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jdporter's scratchpad

by jdporter (Canon)
on Jun 01, 2004 at 20:54 UTC ( #358590=scratchpad: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??

Last update: Feb 06, 2012 at 05:00 UTC

for davies, regarding proposed tutorial RFC Tutorial: Adding and extracting VBA to and from Excel files

Comments on the tutorial itself:

  1. All of the material currently in your "introduction" is footnote material. I'd move it into an actual footnote. And write a real introduction explaining what the tutorial is about! Don't just jump straight into code, expecting the reader to deduce what he's learning about.
  2. Make your code look good at standard wrapping widths, e.g. as Anonymous Monk would see the node. As it is, the "Comment" comments wrap; it looks really bad. I think I'd put the "Comments" on their own lines, either above or below the associated code line.
  3. Consider giving each comment a meaningful ID (like a variable name?) rather than just a number. But this is minor.

If we are going to convert this meditation directly into a tutorial, rather than having you repost:

  1. Delete the paragraph at the top, in which you provide context on the origin of the post. It's way too old for anyone to care now.
  2. Delete the last two paragraphs (after your signature). Again - no one cares about the edits you made back then. It would be one thing if we needed to maintain context for any comments on the post... but there aren't any!

All that being said - I'm not sure this is Tutorials-quality, in the sense that you're really just showing a very specific technique for accomplishing a very arcane task. I'd say it's a better fit for the Cool Uses for Perl section, frankly. It's certainly very cool; I don't mean to take that away from it at all.

As for your other -- RFC Tutorial - Deleting Excel Rows, Columns and Sheets -- It looks really good to me. I'd post it in Cool Uses for Perl ASAP! (Or in Meditations. If you post it in CUFP, modify the title appropriately.)

for Lady_Aleena

my $total_population = $generations{$_}; $total_population += $generations{$_ - 1} if $generations{$_ - 1}; $total_population += $generations{$_ - 2} if $generations{$_ - 2};

for tye

store this in a .vbs file, e.g. eject_drives.vbs. run directly as a command. windows knows how to execute .vbs files.
dim sh, f, i, v set sh = CreateObject("Shell.Application") set f = sh.NameSpace(17) 'My Computer' for each i in f.Items ' MsgBox i.Name & "=" & i.Type if (i.Type = "CD Drive") then for each v in i.Verbs if (v.Name = "E&ject") then v.DoIt() end if next end if next

For Devanchya:

use List::Util qw( shuffle ); use strict; use warnings; my @upper = 'A'..'Z'; my @lower = 'a'..'z'; $_ = "What That April With His Shoures Soote The Drought Of Marche Hath Perced To The Roote "; $" = ''; eval "y/@upper@lower/@{[shuffle @upper]}@{[shuffle @lower]}/"; print

This code appears in the Perl Cookbook, 2nd Ed., and was allegedly taken from Mastering Regular Expressions.

It alleges properly to parse quoted CSV fields with embedded commas and double-quotes, but my test of this utterly fails.

sub parse_csv1 { my $text = shift; # record containing comma-separated values my @fields = ( ); while ($text =~ m{ # Either some non-quote/non-comma text: ( [^"',] + ) # ...or... | # ...a double-quoted field: (with "" allowed inside) " # field's opening quote; don't save this ( now a field is either (?: [^"] # non-quotes or | "" # adjacent quote pairs ) * # any number ) " # field's closing quote; unsaved }gx) { if (defined $1) { $field = $1; } else { ($field = $2) =~ s/""/"/g; } push @fields, $field; } return @fields; }
my @f = parse_csv1('first,"second","thi,rd","fou""rth"'); print "$_\n" for @f;
first second thi rd fou rth

Solution: The problem is on line 15:

( now a field is either
Because the /x switch is in effect, the programmer can, and did, embed comments within the regex. But there is no way for the compiler to check when a # has been accidentally omitted!

Change the line to:

( # now a field is either
IIRC, credit for finding this bug goes to ikegami, and possibly ambrus as well. Thanks, guys!

A couple ideas for styling threads when the
"Lay out threads as <div> instead of <table>" setting is enabled:
/* a basic one: */ div.header { background-color: #EEE; padding: 3px; border-bottom: 1px +solid blue; } ul.replies:before { content: url( +ng) } ul.replies { list-style-type: none; padding-left: 40px; } li.reply { border: 1px solid blue; } /* a fun one: */ div.header { background-color: #DFB; padding: 3px; } ul.replies:before { content: url( +ng) } ul.replies { border-left: 2px solid red; padding: 3px; list-style-type +: none; padding-left: 20px; } li.reply { border-top: 2px solid blue; padding: 3px; } /* both will need something like this: */ div.comment-on { text-align: center; font-size: larger; background-col +or: #DFB; }

<jcw> Jebus, I can't type. <jcw> Perhaps a typing exercise would help. *<* zdog has been kicked off channel #perlmonks by jcw (The quick brow +n fox kicked over the whining dog) <jcw> Yea, that worked. *<* Signoff: castaway (Ping timeout) *<* Signoff: theorbtwo (Ping timeout) <jcw> 3 for the price of 1!

{ package Foo; use overload '""' => \&as_string; sub as_string { "Foo!" } } $_ = bless {}, 'Foo'; /(.*)/ and print "$1\n"; # does this print "Foo!" or "Foo=HASH(0xdeaded)"?

Special Characters in Unicode

Source: Mapping of Unicode characters

Character NameCode point (hex)Character between two Zeroes
Word Joiner&#x2060;0⁠0
Zero-width joiner&#x200D;0‍0
Zero-width non-joiner&#x200C;0‌0
Zero-width space&#x200B;0​0
Zero-width no-break space&#xFEFF;0﻿0
Combining Grapheme Joiner&#x034F;0͏0
Invisible Separator&#x2063;0⁣0
Invisible Times&#x2062;0⁢0
Function Application&#x2061;0⁡0
Space&#x0020;0 0
En Quad&#x2000;0 0
Em Quad&#x2001;0 0
En Space&#x2002;0 0
Em Space&#x2003;0 0
Three-Per-Em Space&#x2004;0 0
Four-Per-Em Space&#x2005;0 0
Six-Per-Em Space&#x2006;0 0
Figure Space&#x2007;0 0
Punctuation Space&#x2008;0 0
Thin Space&#x2009;0 0
Hair Space&#x200A;0 0
Left-to-Right Mark&#x200E;0‎0
Mathematical Space&#x205F;0 0
Soft Hyphen&#x00AD;0­0
Non-breaking Hyphen&#x2011;0‑0
No-break Space&#x00A0;0 0
Narrow No-break Space&#x202F;0 0
Zero-width space&#x200B;0​0
Line separator&#x2028;0 0
Paragraph separator&#x2029;0 0
horizontal tab &#x0009; 0 0
linefeed &#x000A; 0 0
carriage return &#x000D; 0 0
newline &#x0085; 0…0

Gvim commands for using folds to browse Perl data structures generated by Data::Dumper, given that $Data::Dumper::Indent=1;
:set shiftwidth=2 :set foldcolumn=8 (not important) :set foldmethod=indent :1,$foldopen! (to open all folds)

for 635441...

use Tk::FileSelect; use Data::Dumper; use strict; use warnings; my $mw = new MainWindow; my $fs = $mw->FileSelect( -directory => '.' ); $fs->configure(-verify => ['-d'] ); print "$_: ",$fs->Subwidget($_),"\n" for 'dir_entry', # LabEntry 'file_entry', # LabEntry 'dir_list', # ScrlListbox 'file_list', # ScrlListbox 'dialog' # Dialog ; my %ch; $ch{$_} = $_ for $fs->children; delete $ch{$_} for $fs->Subwidget; my( $fr ) = @ch{ grep /Frame/, keys %ch }; my $b = $fr->Button( -text => "New Dir", -command => \&new_dir, ); $b->pack( -side => 'top', -fill => 'x', -expand => 1, ); my $file = $fs->Show; die "> $file\n"; sub new_dir { $fs->Subwidget('dir_entry')->validate; # note that this is the current "accepted" directory name from the # dir entry. It may not be the name of an existing directory! # but it will NOT have a trailing /* even if displayed. # it's possible to wangle the direntry into a state where it # has two slashes before the * and/or letters between # the / and * for example: /x//* /x/y* /x//y* # In all cases, the slash (both slashes, if present) up # through the star are excluded from the value of -directory. my $dir = $fs->cget('-directory'); print "Make a new dir under $dir !\n"; my $new_dirname = Prompt("Enter new folder name:"); # wave hands my $new_dir = "$dir/$new_dirname"; mkdir $new_dir; $fs->Accept_dir($new_dir); }

Mysterious Posts





Wall of Shame: Plagiarists In Residence

The sad, unfortunate fact is that not all of the registered users of this site are playing with a full deck, scruples-wise. In particular, two monks — jesuashok and madtoperl — have routinely posted material by other authors stolen from other sites; in each case, proper attribution of authorship was studiously avoided; and in many cases the plagiarist explicitly claimed the work was original.

I'm not trying to single out these folks. They are simply a couple known, currently active plagiarists. If you discover any other recent or new plagiarisms, please notify me, liverpole, planetscape, chargrill, or shmem (the Plagiarism Posse).

Keep in mind that usernames are not important; people can always create new user accounts to hide behind. Rather, we want to educate any offenders — the people behind the usernames — that plagiarism is not cool and not acceptable.

Advice to moderators:

  • Do not approve posts which are known to be plagiarisms. In the case of posts by known habitual plagiarists such as madtoperl and jesuashok, err on the side of caution. Don't approve until the question has been settled. At this point, we have little reason to believe that jesuashok knows anything about how to program in perl, nor that madtoperl could write an original poem. For example.
  • If possible, unapprove any plagiaristic posts which have already been approved.

Advice to monks:

  • Down-vote plagiaristic posts. It's a shame that these liars have gotten beaucoups XP for posts that they did not put any original work into, nor (in the case of perl code) even understand.

Relevant PMD: How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism?

root posts by jesuashok:

Seekers of Perl Wisdom:

post Plagiarized from
strange behaviour when forking lots of times p5p
Re: "close" failing perldoc:close
remotemachine accessing: did not get any values when I use Win32::NetResource
installing perl modules from cmd prompt in windows
copying file using Net::SCP module
perl's command line snippet which I read from a perl article ( perl tutrous )
what is the difference between index and rindex
slow regular expressions
Module to read outlook.ost and archive.pst files
Automate the Testing using perl with the given third party softwares.
Quote on Perl modules
find the shell inside a perl script
(OT) Perl command line interpolation
search position is getting reset after 'local' perl and p5p
write() removes trailing spaces p5p
close ARGV inside a while
delete hash element while traversing via values coredumped
Carp can't deal with UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD
Increment avoids warning unexpectedly
Data::Dumper issue p5p
Left shift operation done more than 32 times
Perl Exercises
strange behaviour when forking lots of times
The value of pattern match variable $&
Why chomp() is not considering carriage-return
moving the filehandle to anyline of a file
Not able Create Backup file when using INPLACE_EDIT ( $^I )
Round time to nearest 15 or 30 minutes
Populating and accessing complicate Hashes
s/PATTERN/func()/em leaks /m into func() P5P
'my' with 'if 0' retains old value p5p
"map" sometimes uses only the last mapped value rt.perl
getting Date calculation in simpler way
undefing *foo{CODE} does not fully work p5p
Help need in Miscellaneous code clp
readdir() only returns one result when used with p5p
Bad return value from a block with variable localization p5p
Core dump when runing "make test" or "perl" rt.perl
Always Looping
taint mode perplexities tek-tips
Could anyone explain the following Class::MethodMaker Code ?
Reading contents of file using regex perl.beginners
Interesting line which I read from Monk's snippets
Function 'system' nasty behaviour in Cygwin Perl/Tk
how to merge Hash
Passing Dynamic Value to Test::More tests
comparison between system operators and Built in function
what is the function should I need to use for trim white spaces ?
how to add more intelligence to grep functionality
Perl interpretation of weird #! line
Find Empty directories and removing it
Sorting The Date format Values without using any perl modules.
Sorting an array on two computed fields
Understandig on Creating Empty array reference
Simplifying for loop and applying multiple push function
Using the perl modules depends upon the availability of another module.
Script to input IP Address and Subnet Bits (
Strict to references of a particular Variable of particular type.
HTML Table border Issue while created using HTML Template
TMPL_LOOP inside another TMPL_LOOP with HTML::Template
Getting Keys of Hash from Values
Why the print is not working
getting more resource from perl
perl's sleep function
Curious to know the internals of the following code
Finding Hard links
finding Un-Initialised variables from the perl code
need regular expression
Unicode in Perl
Perl packages to convert hash refs to array refs and vice-versa?
Fastest way to get input from a filehandle
Explain comments in qw// quoted data
multiple modules
Arrays and Hashes Mapping

Perl Poetry:

post Plagiarized from
B_egi_N oF Wzdm
If my boss .....
Propose to a Girl web
Prayer for new joinees in perl monks
I love perl
Some relevant discussion followed 571926, including accusations of plagiarism, followed by protestations of innocence.

plagiarisms by madtoperl:

post Plagiarized from
Size varies using TK in different versions?
why Crashing windows API using perl??perl.beginners
My Friend and Mine!Sharon Hopkins (quoted in a reply)
Reaped: order a machine to have sex, love and death?Sharon Hopkins (quoted in a reply)
Options in Life!Spidering Hacks
The day it was dark!!!Peter Eckenrod
Student in Home!!!Yanick

Responses to questions in the Chatterbox

for atcroft:

package SNMPfu; # pass an object which is either a Net::SNMP object # (as returned by Net::SNMP->session) or an SNMP::Session # object (as in the SNMP module/dist). sub wrap { my $obj = shift; bless $obj, __PACKAGE__ . '::' . ref $obj; # rebless } package SNMPfu::Net::SNMP; # wrapper for Net::SNMP use base 'Net::SNMP'; sub get # wraps Net::SNMP::get_request { my( $self, $var_id ) = @_; my $r = $self->get_request( -varbindlist => [$var_id] ); defined $r or die $self->error; $r->{$var_id} } package SNMPfu::SNMP::Session; # wrapper for SNMP::Session use base 'SNMP::Session'; sub get # wraps SNMP::Session::get { my( $self, $var_id ) = @_; $self->get($var_id) # but I'm not sure this correct. Illustration +only. } 1;
In user code:
my $sess = Net::SNMP->session( ... ); # or: my $sess = SNMP::Session->new( ... ); SNMPfu::wrap( $sess ); my $val = $sess->get('sysDescr.0');
By reblessing, we divert all method calls on the object into one of the wrapper classes we've written. By making those wrapper classes inherit from the original class of the object, the user can call "native" methods of the object if she chooses. If we wish to disallow that, just take out the 'use base' lines.

For Intrepid:

my $sh = new Win32::OLE 'Shell.Application' or die; my $folder = $sh->NameSpace( $directory_path ) or die; my $item = $folder->ParseName( $unqualified_filename ) or die; $item->InvokeVerb('Edit');

Determine CD-ROMs, for TheMadHatter:

Put the following code in a file named cdrom_drives.js
Execute it with the command
    cscript /nologo cdrom_drives.js  
/* * cdrom_drives.js * by jdporter */ var sh = WScript.CreateObject('Shell.Application'); var a = new Array(); var i; for ( i = 65; i < 75; i++ ) { // test the first 10 drive letters var p = String.fromCharCode(i,58,92); // letter + colon + backslas +h try { var fi = sh.NameSpace(p).Self; // will throw if bad path if ( fi.IsFileSystem && fi.Type == 'Compact Disc' ) a.push(p); } catch(e) { } } WScript.Echo(a.join("\n"));

Odds and Ends

From tachyon:

Open Source Content Management

Jeff Erickson's CS 373: Combinatorial Algorithms

Get the total reputation of all your nodes.

use LWP::Simple; use XML::Simple; use strict; my( $username, $password ); print "Username: "; chomp( $username = <> ); print "Password: "; chomp( $password = <> ); $username && $password or die "Abort.\n"; my $t = XMLin get ";op=login;user=$ +username;passwd=$password;ticker=yes"; my $total; my $n; while ( my( $id, $hr ) = each %{ $t->{'NODE'} } ) { $total += $hr->{'reputation'}; $n++; } print "$total rep in $n nodes\n";

Get a list of "other users" currently active in the Monastery, and their XP

use LWP::Simple; use strict; *a = \""; printf qq m%2d %7d %s\nm,m leve.="(\d+)"l,m exp="(\d+)"e,m foruser="([^"]+)"ffor map get qq m$a=16046;for_userid=$_m,map m user_id="(\d+)"ug,get qq m$a=15851m;

What's with all the "buddha" usernames?

Wacky. And then there's

HTML for a form with which someone (such as yourself) can send you a msg

This snippet can be put anyplace on PerlMonks where HTML forms are allowed, including your homenode or in your Free Nodelet.

You must replace "jdporter" with your username, and 170442 with your user id (which is your homenode's node_id).

<form method="post" action="?" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlenco +ded"> <input type="hidden" name="node_id" value="170442"> <input type="hidden" name="op" value="message"> <input type="hidden" name="replyto" value="user"> <input type="hidden" name="sendto" value="jdporter"> <input type="text" name="replytotext" size=60 maxlength=255> <input type="hidden" name="sexisgood" value="submit"> </form>

Business Process Execution Language

Business Process Modeling Notation

How to using folds in Vim to browse Data::Dumper output

    $Data::Dumper::Indent=1 is a prerequisite.
  1. :set shiftwidth=2
  2. :set foldcolumn=8 (actual value not critical)
  3. :set foldmethod=indent
  4. :1,$foldopen! to open all folds, since they're initially closed.

Below is the list of node links collected by clicking "Add to public pad" in my Personal Nodelet:

Help for User Settings
On finding the Perl Wisdom
Nodelet types, uses, and (relative) usefulness
Welcome to the Monastery! Make yourself at home.
Spirit of the Monastery
Site Comments.
PerlMonks for the Absolute Beginner
Forum or Knowledge-Base ?
A reflection or two on PM life
Perl $^O values for various operating systems
The Threading Dilemma
Are "PM Discussions" only to be technical?
About Perlmonks: How would you describe PM?
Why does PerlMonks work?
Where and how to start learning Perl
fast, flexible, stable sort
Keyword Nodelet / Tagging documentation
Re: Humorous Module Ideas
Real DJs Code Live (from Wired)
PerlMonks as Ambassadors
The next step
How to get the most of your question from the monks
Help for new monks
New Monks
New Monks Info Page
add entries to vroom's book list
Re: Rethrowing with die $@ considered harmful (local $_ buggy)
Re: Name Space
Pumpkins are best used for...
Re^2: Unused accounts zombified
Re: How can I create an UTF8 encoded txt file contains strings like "aaaa"?
Conversion from UTF-8 to windows-1256 encoding
Re: Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk
Free Nodelet Settings
Making Perl Monks a better place for newbies (and others)

Wow, stuff got inserted above, not below!

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