Ask General Programming Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

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pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

Ziir posted:

What text editors do you guys use with your Macs? I really like Notepad++ for Windows and I'm starting to get the hang on Vim on Linux.

TextMate.

# ? May 16, 2010 09:26

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 11:53

idolmind86: Jun 13, 2003; It's better to burn out than to fade away.

It's even better to work out, numbnuts.

I just got promoted to Project Manager (will still be doing a lot of development). The position was unfilled before I took it. Development Manager was responsible for project management but was basically too busy due to growing business and responsibilities so now I'm taking the project management aspect of things.

Anyway, I'm starting meetings tomorrow to start handing over the reigns and I was wondering if anyone could suggest any books/blogs/etc. that project management centric.

I definitely have my own ideas but I really want to be open minded and learn as much as I can so we can apply the right techniques for what we do. Project management has been a little lacking due to lack of time. I really want to build this into a concrete but appropriate process.

That being said, I think the agile model fits are team very well and I will likely be looking at that for starters so if anyone knows any good resources/books/blocks/whatever on Agile development that would be great as well.

# ? May 18, 2010 01:35

litghost: May 26, 2004; Builder

idolmind86 posted:

I just got promoted to Project Manager (will still be doing a lot of development). The position was unfilled before I took it. Development Manager was responsible for project management but was basically too busy due to growing business and responsibilities so now I'm taking the project management aspect of things.

The mythical man month. This is a general programming management book (as opposed to agile based or whatever), but it has some good words of wisdom (on failure) based on one man's experience on projects.

litghost fucked around with this message at 03:02 on May 18, 2010

# ? May 18, 2010 02:55

Contra Duck: Nov 4, 2004; #1 DAD

idolmind86 posted:

I just got promoted to Project Manager (will still be doing a lot of development). The position was unfilled before I took it. Development Manager was responsible for project management but was basically too busy due to growing business and responsibilities so now I'm taking the project management aspect of things.

Completely unrealted to the question you're asking, but I feel like I should warn you that if your project has any more than a small handful of developers, being PM is really a full-time gig and that you probably won't have time to do development of your own.

# ? May 18, 2010 11:34

tef: May 30, 2004; -> some l-system crap ->

litghost posted:

The mythical man month. This is a general programming management book (as opposed to agile based or whatever), but it has some good words of wisdom (on failure) based on one man's experience on projects.

Peopleware by Tom DeMarco is good. I think the Scott Berkun book on project management is worth a read too.

# ? May 18, 2010 11:39

idolmind86: Jun 13, 2003; It's better to burn out than to fade away.

It's even better to work out, numbnuts.

Contra Duck posted:

Completely unrealted to the question you're asking, but I feel like I should warn you that if your project has any more than a small handful of developers, being PM is really a full-time gig and that you probably won't have time to do development of your own.

The team I'll be over (Dev&QA) is only 7 people, including me. We are growing though but hopefully if we grow that much I'll move more into a consistent PM role.

# ? May 18, 2010 13:15

American Psychonauts: Dec 27, 2005; ...but inside doesn't matter

What's a really good tutorial/e-book/normal book about MySQL? I'm familiar with using it for basic stuff but I'd like to get into it a bit more deeply. Security, optimization on all that stuff.

# ? May 18, 2010 19:49

Blotto Skorzany: Nov 7, 2008; He's a PSoC, loose and runnin'
came the whisper from each lip
And he's here to do some business with
the bad ADC on his chip
bad ADC on his chiiiiip

A Clockwork Orange :v:

# ? May 19, 2010 00:05

goatface: Dec 5, 2007; I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.; Grimey Drawer

I'm running some stuff on a linux cluster using MPI, and in the past it was working. I wouldn't say it was working well, but it was working. Now I've got it to a stage where it should start running well, I've hit an interesting little problem.

When I submit an MPI job with mpirun, it gives the "mpirun must be used to launch all MPI applications" error, as it would if I'd tried to run the program without mpirun. If I'm trying to run it on n cores, I get that error n times. It's been compiled with all the necessary MPI libraries and compiler flags (or at least exactly the same ones that were working previously), everything seems to be linking in nicely, compiler shows no errors and not that many warnings (it's a hideous cludge of Fortran 77/90/95 and C subroutines, I doubt I could get rid of all the warnings without rewriting half of it), if I strip the MPI and run it on a single core it's perfectly happy. This leads me to believe it MUST be a problem with the mpirun installation or the MPI libraries, but the cluster admin swears he's not touched them in months and they're exactly the same ones I was using previously.

I'm currently stumped.

Anyone have any inspiring ideas?

# ? May 19, 2010 15:20

litghost: May 26, 2004; Builder

goatface posted:

I'm running some stuff on a linux cluster using MPI, and in the past it was working. I wouldn't say it was working well, but it was working. Now I've got it to a stage where it should start running well, I've hit an interesting little problem.

When I submit an MPI job with mpirun, it gives the "mpirun must be used to launch all MPI applications" error, as it would if I'd tried to run the program without mpirun. If I'm trying to run it on n cores, I get that error n times. It's been compiled with all the necessary MPI libraries and compiler flags (or at least exactly the same ones that were working previously), everything seems to be linking in nicely, compiler shows no errors and not that many warnings (it's a hideous cludge of Fortran 77/90/95 and C subroutines, I doubt I could get rid of all the warnings without rewriting half of it), if I strip the MPI and run it on a single core it's perfectly happy. This leads me to believe it MUST be a problem with the mpirun installation or the MPI libraries, but the cluster admin swears he's not touched them in months and they're exactly the same ones I was using previously.

I'm currently stumped.

Anyone have any inspiring ideas?

If you are sane, you will have been using version control on your software. Start rolling back until the error goes away, then examine the diff between the threshold to determine what broke the build.

If you are not using version control, I hope you learned your lesson.

# ? May 19, 2010 15:36

goatface: Dec 5, 2007; I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.; Grimey Drawer

It's not my code. Well, most of it isn't my code. Version 1 was released somewhere around 1982, and some of it's still there.

I've just tried running a clean version that I've done nothing to and so should work, and that's giving the same error. So I'm more convinced that someone's pissed about with the MPI installation.

edit - never mind, I found out it was a combination of nobody telling anyone else what they're doing and me not checking some basic things. There are now two different versions of MPI on the cluster and it was defaulting to the other version. SGI MPI and OpenMPI apparently don't get on very well.

goatface fucked around with this message at 16:39 on May 19, 2010

# ? May 19, 2010 16:19

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

I'd imagine it's because there's still only one mpd running and it was the mpd for the other version of MPI.

# ? May 19, 2010 20:02

Dijkstracula: Mar 18, 2003; You can't spell 'vector field' without me, Professor!

Yeah, either that or you're now linking against the new MPI.

I had the same problem this year, too (though in my case it simply caused bus errors :v:

)- we had two MPICH and two OpenMPI implementations on the grad cluster here. It was fricking ridiculous.

# ? May 19, 2010 20:04

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

This is a Linux shell question, so sorry if I missed the thread on that.

As I understand it, sort by default sorts using an entire line as the sorting key. I would expect the following data:

code:

d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.com	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.org	responsibility.org	-	s
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	s

to be reordered such that the first and last rows end up next to each other, since they're alphabetically closer to each other than the other two rows. But when I sort on a file containing that text, it remains as above. Is there something I'm not getting about what sort is doing? I've tried it on a couple machines, so I don't think it's a fluke. The spacing between text is one tab character.

More importantly, is there a way I can get the desired behavior?

# ? May 20, 2010 16:49

tef: May 30, 2004; -> some l-system crap ->

code:

$ cat > foob
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.com	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.org	responsibility.org	-	s
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	s
$ sort foob
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	s
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.com	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.org	responsibility.org	-	s

sort doesn't change the file in-place. you need to save the output.

code:


$ sort foob > foob.sorted
$ cat foob.sorted 
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	s
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.com	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.org	responsibility.org	-	s

# ? May 20, 2010 17:01

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

This is what I'm seeing:

code:

$ sort myfile > myfile.sorted
$ cat myfile.sorted 
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.com	-	-	d
d4a5b	Offsite	responsibility.org	responsibility.org	-	s
d4a5b	Offsite	-	-	-	s

Am I going crazy?

# ? May 20, 2010 17:05

tef: May 30, 2004; -> some l-system crap ->

nope, just your version of sort is different. check your local man-page for providing key arguments.

# ? May 20, 2010 17:35

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

As far as I can tell, the default in this version does use the entire line as key, but clearly something is up. Oh well.

# ? May 20, 2010 18:38

ShoulderDaemon: Oct 9, 2003; support goon fund; Taco Defender

sort is using your locale's collation rules, which are probably telling it that hyphens and whitespace aren't collation-significant.

If you want to sort based on raw byte values, you need to call it as LANG=C sort.

Edit: LC_COLLATE=C sort is the more specific fix, if for some reason you want to leave the rest of the locale intact (so you continue to get localized error messages, for example).

# ? May 20, 2010 19:23

AriTheDog: Jul 29, 2003; Famously tasty.

So I'm unemployed, have little to no programming experience (some html&css, a little bit of scripting for a game mod), and want to start learning some web poo poo - the only problem is, I have no idea what. In the long term, I'd like to be able to make a site with similar functionality to Craigslist, so should I be looking into learning PHP, or what? I have an enormous amount of time, so if I'd be better off starting with something more basic, I'm not opposed to that.

Any advice?

# ? May 20, 2010 20:35

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

AriTheDog posted:

Any advice?

What are your goals in life?

# ? May 20, 2010 20:59

AriTheDog: Jul 29, 2003; Famously tasty.

shrughes posted:

What are your goals in life?

Learning to do some back-end development isn't particularly related to my goals in life. I'm between businesses right now, and while I do a little bit of freelance consulting work with small businesses, I'd like to learn some programming in my spare time because I have a lot of it right now. Learning some programming poo poo might help me with a web business I'm considering, and would certainly make it easier to understand the technical aspects even if I do end up hiring someone else to do the bulk of the work.

# ? May 20, 2010 21:22

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

AriTheDog posted:

...

Okay, then download Python and play around with it, following the Python tutorial -- there are links in the FAQ thread. You'll be better at programming if you start learning Python and then later start learning Javascript or PHP than you would be if you first started learning Javascript or PHP. You can also make websites like Craigslist (or YouTube or Reddit) with Python.

# ? May 21, 2010 00:40

PhantomZero: Sep 7, 2007

I'm having an issue with Access 2007 but it isn't enough to warrant its own thread so I hope someone here might be able to help me out.

I get an error that says, "Cannot open database ". It may not be a database your application recognizes, or the file may be corrupt." everytime I try to import a .csv file

Now at first I thought it was because the file was too big (1.2GB), but then I cut a piece of it and tried with a 163MB file and I received the same error. The file is not open anywhere and can open fine in other applications. Should I just be using an SQL server instead?

# ? May 21, 2010 18:49

tripwire: Nov 19, 2004; _{ghost flow}

I haven't used Access much, but a csv file is a comma delimited table right? It's kind of bizarre that anything would open it as if it were a database. Are you sure there isn't some way to create a table in a database and fill it with the contents of the csv?

Have you checked to see that it has consistent line endings? Maybe access vomits on anything that doesn't delimit lines with '\r\n'

tripwire fucked around with this message at 23:05 on May 21, 2010

# ? May 21, 2010 23:00

LLJKSiLk: Jul 7, 2005; by Athanatos

PhantomZero posted:

I'm having an issue with Access 2007 but it isn't enough to warrant its own thread so I hope someone here might be able to help me out.

I get an error that says, "Cannot open database ". It may not be a database your application recognizes, or the file may be corrupt." everytime I try to import a .csv file

Now at first I thought it was because the file was too big (1.2GB), but then I cut a piece of it and tried with a 163MB file and I received the same error. The file is not open anywhere and can open fine in other applications. Should I just be using an SQL server instead?

I've had problems querying csv/xls files created via another application other than Excel. Generally speaking, I have to open Excel, 'save as' the same file type, and then it opens correctly.

Try opening your csv file in excel, doing a save as csv, and then try importing again.

If this works properly, you can probably automate Access/Excel via vba or something to handle your imports for you.

# ? May 22, 2010 00:13

NeilPerry: May 2, 2010

So I have this assignment for programming in access with VBA where I have to insert an image from google images into a database depending on what search criteria you enter.

Right now I've got this:

code:

Private Sub btnSearch_Click()
Dim ie As Object
Dim strSearch As String
strSearch = txtSearch
Set ie = CreateObject("internetexplorer.application")

ie.Visible = True

ie.navigate "http://www.google.be/imghp?hl=nl&tab=wi"

         While ie.busy
            DoEvents
         Wend
         
DoEvents
Call SendKeys(strSearch)
DoEvents
Call SendKeys("{tab}")
DoEvents
Call SendKeys("{enter}")
End Sub

First problem: It only works occasionally. I would replace the sendkeys parts with ie.documents.getelementbyid("").value but it gives an error at properties documents. Maybe I'm lacking a reference but I wouldn't know which one to check.

Second problem: I can sometimes get to the image page. But what do I do now? I guess I can use ie.documents.all(number) since I don't think the image links have the same ID each time the page loads(or do they?). I don't think using a lot of sendkeys("{tab}") would work since the number of tabs depend on advertisments and whether or not google is giving you advice on your spelling.

Third problem: Say I get to the image. How do I go about putting it in my database? Right now the database only has one table with id, search criteria(text) and image(ole object)

Any help is appreciated!

e: I just changed the ie.navigate url to "http://www.google.be/images?hl=nl&source=imghp&q=" & strSearch & "&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=". This way I don't even need to press the first buttons.

e2: About the third problem, I managed to find a way to download a file using urldownloadtofile. The only thing I now need is a way to get it from my computer to my database, and of course to get the sourcepath of the image so I can actually download it.

NeilPerry fucked around with this message at 15:22 on May 23, 2010

# ? May 23, 2010 13:49

PhantomZero: Sep 7, 2007

SiLk-2k5 posted:

I've had problems querying csv/xls files created via another application other than Excel. Generally speaking, I have to open Excel, 'save as' the same file type, and then it opens correctly.

Try opening your csv file in excel, doing a save as csv, and then try importing again.

If this works properly, you can probably automate Access/Excel via vba or something to handle your imports for you.

The problem is the file is too big for Excel to handle as well, it has 5 million rows.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll try cutting it down and making them into separate worksheets and saving them in Excel.

For clarification I was using Access's built in create a table from .csv feature and everything appeared fine in the wizard to the point of displaying the test entries, but I got that error when it was almost finished importing. Access 07 allowed me to choose the delimiters(,) as well as the character symbols(") however there is a ton of empty columns which may be throwing it off.

# ? May 25, 2010 02:51

LLJKSiLk: Jul 7, 2005; by Athanatos

PhantomZero posted:

The problem is the file is too big for Excel to handle as well, it has 5 million rows.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll try cutting it down and making them into separate worksheets and saving them in Excel.

For clarification I was using Access's built in create a table from .csv feature and everything appeared fine in the wizard to the point of displaying the test entries, but I got that error when it was almost finished importing. Access 07 allowed me to choose the delimiters(,) as well as the character symbols(") however there is a ton of empty columns which may be throwing it off.

You could probably whip up something in C++ to read in the files and generate new files every 65,000 lines or whatever. That would allow you to read in Excel properly.

Also... that is a lot of records for an access database. It may not be able to handle that many. Not necessarily due to record number, but due to file size being limited (4gb I think).

# ? May 25, 2010 04:18

sonic bed head: Dec 18, 2003; this is naturual, baby!

I am studying for the final in my computer architecture class. I'm going over my old midterm and have come across a question that is marked right, so I understood it at one time.

The question is:
Write MIPS assemply code that moves every bit of $t1 left one hexadecimal digit, places a 0101(base 2) in the right 4 bits of the result and clears the upper 16 bits of the result. You are not allowed to use any arithmetic (add, sub, multiplication, division) instructions in your answer.

My answer was

pre:

sll $t1, $t1, 4
andi, $t1, $t1, 0xFFF5

I got this right, but now that I think about it, I have no idea how. It seems like I'm doing everything except placing 0101(base 2) into the right most digits of the answer. I'm definitely clearing the 2nd and 4thbit, but how is this setting the 1st and 3rd bit? Was this a mistake that my teacher missed? If so, how would I do this? Thanks for your help.

# ? May 26, 2010 01:40

Lysidas: Jul 26, 2002; John Diefenbaker is a madman who thinks he's John Diefenbaker.; Pillbug

sonic bed head posted:

I am studying for the final in my computer architecture class. I'm going over my old midterm and have come across a question that is marked right, so I understood it at one time.

The question is:
Write MIPS assemply code that moves every bit of $t1 left one hexadecimal digit, places a 0101(base 2) in the right 4 bits of the result and clears the upper 16 bits of the result. You are not allowed to use any arithmetic (add, sub, multiplication, division) instructions in your answer.

My answer was
pre:
sll $t1, $t1, 4
andi, $t1, $t1, 0xFFF5
I got this right, but now that I think about it, I have no idea how. It seems like I'm doing everything except placing 0101(base 2) into the right most digits of the answer. I'm definitely clearing the 2nd and 4thbit, but how is this setting the 1st and 3rd bit? Was this a mistake that my teacher missed? If so, how would I do this? Thanks for your help.

I haven't written MIPS assembly in years, but it looks to me like you're just missing a ori $t1, $t1, 0x5 (assuming that ori is an instruction, of course). It does look like a mistake that your professor missed.

# ? May 26, 2010 03:54

sonic bed head: Dec 18, 2003; this is naturual, baby!

Lysidas posted:

I haven't written MIPS assembly in years, but it looks to me like you're just missing a ori $t1, $t1, 0x5 (assuming that ori is an instruction, of course). It does look like a mistake that your professor missed.

Thank you! That makes sense now. And-ing with 0's clears bits and or-ing 0's with any bit pattern sets them. Got it.

# ? May 26, 2010 04:32

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

sonic bed head posted:

Thank you! That makes sense now. And-ing with 0's clears bits and or-ing 0's with any bit pattern sets them. Got it.

Now for extra brownie points go to your prof and say you think you should have your mid term mark lowered.

# ? May 26, 2010 22:13

furtheraway: Dec 19, 2005; this milchkuh has given its last pound of flesh

I want to use a unix shell script to generate a plain text file of sequential ten digit numbers (from 0000000000 to 9999999999) with each separated by a carriage return. Something like this:

0000000000
0000000001
...
9999999998
9999999999

What is the most efficient way to do this?

EDIT: Thanks for all the helpful answers!

furtheraway fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 28, 2010

# ? May 28, 2010 16:45

yatagan: Aug 31, 2009; by Ozma

furtheraway posted:

I want to use a unix shell script to generate a plain text file of sequential ten digit numbers (from 0000000000 to 9999999999) with each separated by a carriage return. Something like this:

0000000000
0000000001
...
9999999998
9999999999

What is the most efficient way to do this?

Is this really an exercise in true efficiency for some reason, or do you just want the job done?

# ? May 28, 2010 17:03

Crazy RRRussian: Mar 5, 2010; by Fistgrrl

furtheraway posted:

I want to use a unix shell script to generate a plain text file of sequential ten digit numbers (from 0000000000 to 9999999999) with each separated by a carriage return. Something like this:

0000000000
0000000001
...
9999999998
9999999999

What is the most efficient way to do this?

code:

for((num=0; num <= 9999999999; num += 1))
do
output=$num
while [ ${#output} != 10 ]
do
output="0"${output}
done
echo $output
done

Most likely not efficient, but gets job done.

# ? May 28, 2010 17:04

Flobbster: Feb 17, 2005; "Cadet Kirk, after the way you cheated on the Kobayashi Maru test I oughta punch you in tha face!"

Crazy RRRussian posted:

code:

for((num=0; num <= 9999999999; num += 1))
do
output=$num
while [ ${#output} != 10 ]
do
output="0"${output}
done
echo $output
done

Most likely not efficient, but gets job done.

Ick, use printf to do the zero-padding for you:

code:

for (( i = 0; i <= 9999999999; i++ ))
do
     printf "%010d\n" $i
done

# ? May 28, 2010 17:07

Crazy RRRussian: Mar 5, 2010; by Fistgrrl

O poo poo, I didn't know printf was a stand-alone program. sweet.

On the other hand, how expensive is calling new process printf versus doing the while loop padding. I suppose echo is spawning its own process as well tho.

Crazy RRRussian fucked around with this message at 17:12 on May 28, 2010

# ? May 28, 2010 17:08

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

echo and printf are both shell builtins, it doesn't need to fork for that.

Also, you're looking at around 102GB of data here, it's going to take a while no matter what you use.

# ? May 28, 2010 17:19

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 11:53

Vanadium: Jan 8, 2005

Why are we not using seq here? seq --format=%010g 1 100000 or whatever number.

# ? May 28, 2010 17:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Ask General Programming Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

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