Posted by Tom Moertel
Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:56:00 GMT
Text documents come in two basic flavors: text editor and word processor. In the text-editor flavor, a document is represented by lines of text, each ending with a line break. Paragraphs are separated by two breaks. In the word-processor flavor, there are no line breaks, only paragraphs (because word processors will “wrap” lines of text as you edit them).
If you need to convert from text-editor flavor (lines) to word-processor flavor (paragraphs), here’s a handy Perl one-liner that will do it:
perl -lp00e's/\n/ /g' input.txt > output.txt
If you’re editing in Emacs, you can convert a selected region of text using the same one-liner via shell-command-on-region:
C-u M-| perl -lp00e's/\n/ /g' RET
To go the other way, from word-processor flavor to text-editor flavor, the Unix command-line tools fold(1) and fmt(1) do the job.
Tags emacs, perl, text
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Fri, 22 May 2009 05:59:00 GMT
I know, the economy sucks, and everything is expensive these days. It’s even worse for you, a polyglot programmer with a serious programming-language obsession. You prowl Proggit, lounge at LtU, and occasionally step on over to Stack Overflow. But it’s just not enough. You need more. You need to hang out in meatspace with other fascinating programmers, diving into modern object systems, getting mechanical with crazy VMs, hacking on code like the wild code-hacking beast that you are.
Sure, it’s a nice dream and all, but how are you going to make it happen? And even if you could in theory make it happen, how could you afford to do it now, in this down economy?
Well, my friend, let me share a secret: You can make it happen. And you can afford it. Here’s how: Just be at the 10th Anniversary Yet Another Perl Conference. It’s day upon day upon day of jam-packed programming-language goodness of all sorts, not “just” Perl – and this year it’s the one conference you can afford.
Seriously, I did a little price-checking, and YAPC is about the most underpriced programming-fest on the planet:
| Conference |
Price |
| JavaOne |
$1,995 |
| RailsConf |
895 |
| PyCon |
450 |
| RubyConf |
200 |
| YAPC |
125 |
Wait, you’re not into Perl? No problem. The Perl community has always embraced diversity, and there’s a lot more than just Perl at YAPC. Check out the tag cloud for talks and you’ll see what I’m saying. At YAPC, the good stuff comes in enormous buckets, plenty for programming aficionados of all stripes. Here’s a taste:
- There’s the Parrot Virtual Machine Workshop. That’s right, YAPC comes front-loaded with a thunderous, 2-day, under-the-hood hackfest, all devoted to a modern VM – Parrot – that’s optimized for your favorite dynamic languages.
- You’re serious about keeping track of your code, right? Well, YAPC’s got talks about Git, too.
- Into objects? Then consider a barrel of talks about the Moose object system, which builds upon great ideas from Perl 6, CLOS (of LISP fame), Smalltalk, Java, BETA, OCaml, and Ruby – and sports roles, delegation, and a meta-object protocol.
- Are you into testing? Well, Perl culture is positively infected with testing. At YAPC|10, there are half a dozen talks about it. (Also: find out why you ought to be harnessing the power of TAP, even if you never program in Perl.)
- And, of course, there’s a little Haskell love, too: What Haskell did to my brain.
See, YAPC is for you.
Am I trying to persuade you to join us at YAPC? Yes. But I’m only doing it because I care about you. YAPC is a fascinating conference, packed with hackers from around the world, all eager to share interesting things, things many you would find delightful, if only you knew about them. So I’m letting you know about them, right now, so you don’t miss out.
Do yourself a favor. If you can figure out how to get your brain to Pittsburgh in the 4th week of June 2009 – yes, only 4 weeks away – then by all means register now for YAPC|10. It’s a great conference at a great price, and it’s something no discriminating hacker ought to be denied.
I hope to see you at YAPC|10.
Update: If any Haskellers are reading this and want to meet up at
YAPC, let me know. I’m trying to put together a
BOF session.
Posted in perl
Tags conferences, haskell, moose, parrot, perl, pittsburgh, programming, tap, yapc
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:28:00 GMT
My wife and I are on vacation. We spent yesterday at Longwood
Gardens in eastern Pennsylvania.
It’s beautiful: words don’t do it justice – you really do need to
see the photos. That’s why I took about 500 photos yesterday. At
least, that’s what I thought until I got back to our bed & breakfast
and tried to download the photos from my camera to my laptop.
Crap! About a quarter of the photos were missing! I wasn’t sure what
had happened, but I suspect that my budget 16-GB SD card had started
throwing bad blocks. There go my priceless vacation memories, right
down the technological toilet.
But maybe those photos weren’t irretrievably flushed. Maybe the data
behind most of them was still on the SD card, if only I could get at
it. Hey, I’ve got Perl on my laptop: I can get at that data.
Here’s how it went down.
First, I scanned the raw blocks of the suspected-faulty SD card,
looking for the markers that indicate the start of a JPEG file. My
laptop runs Linux, so it was easy to access the blocks. I just read
the device file corresponding to the SD card’s filesystem. I used a
Perl script to walk through the file in block-sized steps,
hunting JPEG headers. Here’s the meat of the script:
while (my $bytes_read = sysread($fh, $buffer, $READ_BLOCKS*$BLOCK_SIZE)) {
for (my $offset = 0; $offset < $bytes_read; $offset += $BLOCK_SIZE) {
my $tag = substr($buffer, $offset + 6, 4);
if (grep $tag eq $_, qw(JFIF Exif)) {
print $pos + $offset/$BLOCK_SIZE, "\n"; # emit "interesting" block
}
}
$pos += $bytes_read/$BLOCK_SIZE;
}
I handled the second half of the rescue mission with another Perl
script. This script grabbed the data starting at each interesting
block, as determined by the first script, and tried to decode the data
losslessly as a JPEG file, writing the result to a new file on my
laptop’s hard drive. Here are the tasty bits of that script:
$SIG{PIPE} = 'IGNORE'; # pipe will break on damaged images
while (my $target = <>) {
# seek forward until we hit the desired block
while ($pos != $target) {
my $diff = $target - $pos;
$diff = $MAX_SEEK_BLOCKS if $diff > $MAX_SEEK_BLOCKS;
sysseek($fh, $diff * $BLOCK_SIZE, 1);
$pos += $diff;
}
# read the data starting at that block, attempting to decode as JPEG
if (my $bytes_read = sysread($fh, $buffer, $BLOCK_SIZE*$DATA_READ_SIZE)) {
my $outfile = sprintf("%s/%010d.jpg", $outdir, $target);
open(my $pipe, "|jpegtran -copy all -outfile $outfile")
or die "can't open pipe: $!";
print $pipe $buffer;
close($pipe);
$pos += $DATA_READ_SIZE;
}
}
With these two scripts, I was able to retrieve almost all of the lost photos. That’s 120 more priceless memories that I can post to Flickr to annoy my friends. Yay, Perl!
(BTW, if you want to see some of the rescued photos, see my Longwood
Gardens, Spring 2009 photo
set on
Flickr.)
Posted in perl
Tags perl, photography, vacation
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:03:00 GMT
Hey! All you Perl hackers out there, don’t forget to submit your talk proposals for the 10th Anniversary Yet Another Perl Conference.
Wait, you don’t know about this great opportunity to share cool Perl stuff with your peers? Then, by all means, read all about it. That’s right, you don’t want to miss the chance to give a talk at the big 10th Anniversary YAPC.
So submit a talk or two. But do it now. The deadline is approaching fast.
Seriously, why not submit a talk right now? Don’t put it off: seize the day.
Your pal,
Tom
Posted in perl
Tags perl, yapc, yapc10, yapcna2009
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:03:00 GMT
Just a quick note to all the wonderful Perlfolk who are eagerly
awaiting news of YAPC|10. (That’s the 10th-anniversary Yet Another
Perl Conference, to be held June 22-24, 2009, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it all
started back in 1999.) Ahem:
Your beloved organizers have been hard at work and will be making
some announcements shortly. Stay tuned to yapc10 on
twitter for the latest and greatest.
Until then, don’t worry: be cool. When it comes to conference
planning, we’re a little less conversation, a little more action.
That’s just how we roll.
Hugs and kisses,
Tom
Tag: YAPC::NA::2009
Posted in perl
Tags elvis, perl, pittsburgh, yapc, yapc10
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:04:00 GMT
The 2008 Pittsburgh Perl Workshop is this
weekend! I can’t wait. (BTW, there are still seats available. If you
can somehow get yourself to Pittsburgh this weekend, by
all means, grab a PPW
ticket now.)
I’m on the organizing committee, so I get an advance look at the
talks, and I’m continually impressed by the quantity and sheer
interestingness of the things that the Perl community has to say.
When leading members of a community volunteer their time to talk to
you about something they’re passionate about, that something is
usually fascinating.
This year is no exception. There are tons of talks I want to see. Check out the schedule for
Saturday and
Sunday,
and you’ll see what I mean. (You’ll note that there are even
talks on programming GPUs and adorable BUG embedded hardware.)
In addition to technical talks, there are three courses being
offered this year. Daniel Klein is once again leading his From Zero
To Perl introductory course, which was widely praised at last year’s
PPW. Author and Perl trainer Peter Scott is offering Maintaining
Code While Staying Sane, which is all about maintaining legacy code,
something most programmers must do for a (surprisingly) large chunk of
their careers. Finally, the ever-knowledgeable brian d foy is
offering his Mastering Perl course for coders interested in learning
how to reliably write professional, enterprise-quality Perl programs.
(I think there are openings for some of the classes, too. If you’re interested,
click one of the links above and try to grab a spot.)
This year we’re expanding on the Hackathons, too. We actually have
allocated a dedicated “Hackathon Room” – and we’ve arranged for
freshly ground, freshly brewed coffee all day long to fuel the
hacking. :-)
All in all, it’s shaping up to be another fun-filled, festive PPW.
I hope to see you there!
Posted in perl
Tags perl, ppw, ppw08
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:23:00 GMT
Alex Smith, a 20-year-old EE student in the UK, proved that the 2, 3 Turing machine is universal. In doing so, he was able to claim the $25,000 prize that Stephen Wolfram offered for the first proof (or disproof) of the 2, 3 machine’s universality.
This story has been getting a lot of attention lately, but one part of
the story has not: that the Perl programming language is featured in the proof. In his documentation of the proof, Universality of Wolfram’s 2, 3 Turing
Machine,
Smith wrote, “I have written several Perl programs, to demonstrate the
constructions given in the proof and to interpret the systems given in
various conjectures.” Smith’s proof includes no fewer than 7 Perl
programs.
Go Perl!
Posted in perl
Tags math, perl, proof
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:04:00 GMT
I am on the planning committee for the Pittsburgh Perl
Workshop. So far, it’s been an interesting
ride. Last year was the first PPW, and it went surprisingly well. In
the post-conference surveys, 94 percent of respondents said they
wanted to come back for another PPW, so we committed ourselves to
repeating the grueling conference-planning process for
2007. (Fact: making big commitments like this is much more likely
to happen if you’re drinking beer at the time.)
Now a year has gone by, and PPW 2007 is
only three weeks away. This year’s conference is 100% larger – two
full days – and offers a new, much-asked-for option: a
one-day introductory course
to give programmers new to Perl a quick dose of the language so they
can dive into the rest of the conference. This year’s conference also
offers a full-length Hackathon for those who feel the urge to code
at the conference.
The main attraction, however, is the conference’s wide array of
technical talks. We have retained
the same mix of industry and academic speakers that attendees said
they liked so much last year. Indeed, our speaker list includes some
of last year’s most fascinating speakers, as well as many new speakers
drawn from the world of Perl. No matter what your interests are,
you’ll find talks for you at PPW 2007. (I’m particularly interested
in the talks on continuation-based web applications, the cool new
stuff in Perl 5.10, and the Moose object system.)
All of this is to say: Do not miss PPW 2007! Where
else are you going to find so many interesting people, so many
fascinating talks, and so many opportunities to have fun and make
friends while learning useful stuff, all for so little expense?
(Regular admission is only $70, and students get a big discount.)
Get your ticket now because
over half of the seats are already gone.
I hope to see you there.
Posted in perl
Tags conferences, perl, pittsburgh, ppw, ppw2007
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:18:00 GMT
This year’s Pittsburgh Perl Workshop is shaping up
to be uber-techno-awesome. This year, it’s two big days of
lively technical talks and full-force Perl festiveness. Yes, come
October, programmers of all stripes will gather in Pittsburgh over the
weekend of the 13th to grab a slice of the fun. A big slice. And you – yes
you, my friend – should be there.
Lots of interesting talks are flowing in, but it’s not too late
to grab a speaking slot. If you have
anything interesting to say about Perl, now is your time. 20-
and 50-minute slots are available. To claim one, just go to
pghpw.org and submit a talk
proposal. It’s easy. But
act now, before it’s too late!
If you have any interest in Perl, you’ll want to be at PPW
2007, and if you have anything to say about
Perl, you’ll definitely want to speak at PPW
2007.
Don’t miss your opportunity. Seize the day!
Posted in perl
Tags perl, pghpw, ppw2007, speaking
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:38:00 GMT
Last week I gave a talk on the R statistics
system and Perl for the Pittsburgh Perl
Mongers. The example that threaded through the
talk was something I have written about here before, extracting
useful information from the Internet Movie
Database.
If you’ve read my earlier blog
post
or have used the Grand Unified IMDB Movie Rating Decoder
Ring,
you might find the slides from the talk interesting. They provide
some more details about the R and Perl code used to analyze the IMDB data
and create the decoder ring.
You can get the slides here:
Posted in talks
Tags imdb, perl, R, statistics, talks
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