Vim, Cygwin, MySQL & Zsh Tips

Converting a Textified File Name back into Title Case

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:25:36 +0000

This could easily be done with Perl but here is a zsh solution

I want to convert a textified string to a Title Case Phrase
>
> eg
> fred-goat-dog.jpg to Fred Goat Dog
>

% print ${${(Cs:-:):-fred-goat-dog.jpg}%.*}
Fred Goat Dog

This curiously uses a smiley face though
foo=fred-goat-dog.jpg
echo ${(C)foo:gs/-/ /:r} might be more elegant
From the zsh newsgroup (RD&MM)

and to textify a phrase

s=’Fred Goat Dog’
print ${(L)s:gs/ /-/}.jpg
or
print ${(L)s// /-}.jpg

Useful VIM Abbreviations for Debugging Perl

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:51:44 +0000

iab perlb print “

debug ::: $_ :: $’ :: $` line “.__LINE__.”\n”;exit;
iab perlbb print “

debug ::: a line “.__LINE__.”\n”;exit;
iab perlbd do{print “

debug :: a line “.__LINE__.”\n”;exit} if $_ =~ /\w\w/i;
iab perld use Data::Dumper; print Dumper %ENV;

the a automatically inserts whatever variable you had previously stored in register a

Copying all but today’s files

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:23:55 +0000

I’d put some new files into a folder before remembering to mothball all the old files:-

Here is a zsh solution:-

>mv *.*(^m-1) ./old

zsh wonderful use of dirs,popd,pushp, cd ~5

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:36:50 +0000

I’ve never got the hang of popd & pushd they seemed a bit pointless. zsh however has extended their abilities eg:-

> dirs -v # number and list your recent directories one per line

> cd ~5 # cd to directory 5 in the directory stack

> cd - # the tab complete lists the directory stack then type a digit to select the one you require (saves you having to do a dirs -v in the first place

I have to work in very complicated directory structures so this will be fantastically useful.

#don’t forget the zsh cd substitute command

> cd olddir newdir

eg you are in

/inetpub/wwwroot/www.livesite.co.uk/products/

> cd live test

/inetpub/wwwroot/www.testsite.co.uk/products/

Using Git for Document/Software Version Control

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:52:28 +0000

I had been using my own ad-hoc system for years but recently started using CVS to maintain a history of my file and document changes. I was quite happy with CVS but everyone told me I should be using Git instead. Git seems to be simpler and more intuitive. I can set up git for a folder or project very quickly. You just need the following 5 commands to get going

git init (set up git for the current directory)
git add *.php   (add all your php files or whatever)
git commit -m “first version”    (also need to commit all your existing php files)
vi index.php (make a few changes)
git commit -a -m “Added new date feature”   (do this periodically to maintain version control)

gitk is a simple TK Gui which allows you to review you versions etc. I am delighted to have version control, all I have to do is remember to do a > git commit -a -m “Added new date feature” every now and again (eg daily)

Viewing Remembered Password in Firefox

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:09:03 +0000

You know the frustration of being able to log into a website because your browser has
remembered the password but you have forgotten it and so cannot login from another pc.
Well FireFox will show them to you

options->security->Saved Passwords then click Show Passwords

You may want to consider the security implications as well, to disable this feature while
retaining the ability of the browser to remember passwords

go to

options->security-set master password

I personally never let a browser remember say my PayPal password

copy a file while modifying a value inside it

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:20:33 +0000

The sed does the filtering, you should be able to see how to adapt this to your own requirements

So I want to duplicate init.php while changing the value of a flag inside it for each copy

cat init.php | sed s/flag=2/flag=3/ > dir3/init.php
cat init.php | sed s/flag=2/flag=4/ > dir4/init.php

If you see the first comment Bawdo suggests rightly that this is a UUOC

sed “s/flag=2/flag=4/” init.php > dir4/init.php

I’ve always underused sed unfortunately

which then can written (zsh)

for i in {3,4}; sed s/flag=2/flag=$i/ init.php > dir$i/init.php

sed stands for stream editor and therefore cannot do an in place edit this is where perl thrives

perl -p -i -e ’s/\surname\b/form_surname/g’ *.php

or safer

perl -p -i.bak -e ’s/\b23\b/34/g’ fred.php (creates a backup of each file eg fred.bak)

Forgetting How You Solved a Problem the First Time

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:55:06 +0000

Today I had to update a 12 year old Higgledy-piggledy Microsoft Access Database application to work with the year 2010 instead of 2009 amongst other things . The original designer had needlessly hard-coded the current year’s and previous year’s date anyway I had some notes from when I did it 12 months ago which described what values need changing, but could I find where those values were defined? My notes were not specific enough. The REAL PROBLEM was that last year I must have altered these values without too much of a sweat and so not taken much trouble to note down exactly.

Fortunately I remembered the wonderful stackoverflow.com website. I posed my question and got several useful pointers in a few minutes and these helped me find the solution which was to set the option search whole project.

This is actually a generic problem in life when we realize that we’ve been doing something automatically and been unconscious of how we did it.

Using Ubuntu to Delete Windows 7 Trojans

admin — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:20:33 +0000

My broadband service provider informed me that my network IP address was issuing massive amounts of spam email. To my horror I realised it was my own PC. I’d recently done a lot of work double checking my PC with both Sophus and AVG so I thought I was clean. The Service provider recommended that I use Avast and that I do a DOS Level Search from Boot. The advantage of doing this is that viruses and Trojans have a lot less chance of hiding themselves somewhere in Windows. Well Avast spotted quite a few problems including an iframe Trojan in a back-up of a website but nothing that solved my problem. Well I ran avast several times and then it asked to do another Boot search and then alerted me to a trojan in a driver file micbd.sys c:\windows\System32\drivers\micbd.sys unfortunately the Trojan would not let me delete it from DOS or from Windows whatever, so I used my old trick I booted from a Ubuntu CD this gave me access to the Windows File System and I deleted the offending micbd.sys driver. Now have fought off a couple of Trojans recently I can give you a clue in both cases the first thing I noticed was that the virus checker listed the eventual file as UNOPENABLE

So two tips you may find useful:-

Use a Ubuntu DVD to rescue, backup, or repair a damaged Windows System (do not install Ubuntu boot from the CD)
When looking for a Trojan or Virus on your Windows PC be very suspicious that your virus checker marks as inaccessible

PHP : Read XML File with simplexml_load_file Test Script

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:41:25 +0000

/* create test.xml from following lines Fred Joe Reminder Meeting Tomorrow */ error_reporting(E_ALL); if (!function_exists('simplexml_load_file')) exit(' function does not exist'); if (file_exists('test.xml')) { $xml = @simplexml_load_file('test.xml'); echo "

";var_dump($xml);

  }

else { exit('
Error could not locate XML file'); }

?>