numbersix

very useful way of using perl as a replacement for sed when sed just doesn't cut it - eg
cat blah | perl -p -i -e 's/foo/bar/g'
perl -pe 's/,/-/; s/,/ /; s/,/ /; s/,/ /; s/,/./g;' infile > outfile

My other computer is your IIS server.

find out what perl modules you have installed locally:
$ perldoc perllocal

find out what perl modules you have installed locally:
$ perldoc perllocal

useful command line perl for doing a grep but only returning the matched string, not the whole line:

cat filename | perl -ne 'if($_ =~ /regexpr/) { print('$&
');}'

can't help thinking you should be able to do this with grep...

Norman Mailer on the 'War on terrorism' and Iraq :
Part I
Part II

Perl's mkdir function is a bit odd if you expect the mask parameter to apply permissions directly. this is a good explanation of it, and make sure you do NOT put quotes around the mask, otherwise it behaves even more weirdly.

Chilling article in the Guardian about Wal-Mart and how corporate America is taking over not only small towns but also what people read and listen to. This is sick.

Currently reading Learning Perl. Although I've taught myself most of the basics in the last year or two, there is still a lot in there that fills gaps, and it's good to have things explained properly. And the best bit is finding out little nuggets like for instance the very cool feature of being able to attach a DBM file to a hash with one line :

dbmopen(%somehash, "dbmfilename", 0644);

That's it. Seems to work without any extra modules either. Neat!

The televison in my hotel room is a typical weird hotel tv, not quite the same as a normal one, strange front end menu system. When you turn it off using the big button on the front, a message is displayed on a little LED panel to say 'OFF'. This stays until you turn it on again. My definition of off obviously isn't the same as Philips'.

Makes me think of a lot of PCs these days, their power buttons don't actually turn the power off, but mearly suggest to the machine that a shutdown has been requested. It seems then to be up to the PC to actually turn off if it wants. Of course what usually happens is that you're pressing the button because the machine has gotten itself into a state and is either too busy to field power off suggestions, or not in the mood, so it doesn't even work.

We're loosing control of the machines we're building! Of course there's always the power cable....