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  • PHP static function self:: in joomla JFactory class explanation?

    - by Carbon6
    Hi I'm looking at the code of Joomla and trying to figure out what exactly happends in this function. index.php makes a call to function $app = JFactory::getApplication('site'); jfactory.php code public static function getApplication($id = null, $config = array(), $prefix='J') { if (!self::$application) { jimport('joomla.application.application'); self::$application = JApplication::getInstance($id, $config, $prefix); } return self::$application; } application.php code.. public static function getInstance($client, $config = array(), $prefix = 'J') { static $instances; if (!isset($instances)) { $instances = array(); } ....... more code ........ return $instances[$client]; } Now I cannot figure out in function getApplication why is self:$application used. self::$application = JApplication::getInstance($id, $config, $prefix); $application is always null, what is the purpose of using this approach. I tryied modifying it to $var = JApplication::getInstance($id, $config, $prefix); and returnig it but it doesn't work. I would be very glad if someone with more knowledge could explain what is happening here detailed as possible. Many thanks.

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  • How can I generate an "unlimited" world?

    - by snowlord
    I would like to create a game with an endless (in reality an extremely large) world in which the player can move about. Whether or not I will ever get around to implement the game is one matter, but I find the idea interesting and would like some input on how to do it. The point is to have a world where all data is generated randomly on-demand, but in a deterministic way. Currently I focus on a large 2D map from which it should be possible to display any part without knowledge about the surrounding parts. I have implemented a prototype by writing a function that gives a random-looking, but deterministic, integer given the x and y of a pixel on the map (see my recent question about this function). Using this function I populate the map with "random" values, and then I smooth the map using a simple filter based on the surrounding pixels. This makes the map dependent on a few pixels outside its edge, but that's not a big problem. The final result is something that at least looks like a map (especially with a good altitude color map). Given this, one could maybe first generate a coarser map which is used to generate bigger differences in altitude to create mountain ranges and seas. Anyway, that was my idea, but I am sure that there exist ways to do this already and I also believe that given the specification, many of you can come up with better ideas. EDIT: Forgot the link to my question.

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  • How can someone with no experience learn how to program?

    - by Mugatu
    A friend and I have been coming up with website ideas for a couple years, mostly just jotting them down whenever we come up with a good, useful idea when browsing the web. For the past 6 months we've hired a couple different programmers to make a couple of the sites for us, but have been disappointed with how it's gone. Been too slow and too many miscommunications for our liking. So like the saying goes if you want something done right do it yourself, we're going to do it ourselves. I know nothing about programming, I've never written a line of code in my life. I consider myself very good with math and about as logical as you can get, but I have zero real-life programming knowledge. The sites we want to make are all pretty 'Web 2.0'ish', meaning user-generated content, commenting on posts, pages that change on the fly, etc. So here are some of my questions for anyone who's been there before: Is there a language you'd recommend learning first? Something that is a good indicator how most other languages work? What web programming languages do you recommend learning first based on popularity both now and the future. I don't want to learn a language that's going to be outdated by the time I'm an expert at it. Any specific books you'd recommend? Any general advice you'd give to someone literally starting at square zero for coding who plans on being in it for the long haul?

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  • When to drop an IT job

    - by Nippysaurus
    In my career I have had two programming jobs. Both these jobs were in a field that I am most familiar with (C# / MSSQL) but I have quit both jobs for the same reason: unmanageable code and bad (loose) company structure. There was something in common with both these jobs: small companies (in one I was the only developer). Currently I am in the following position: being given written instructions which are almost impossible to follow (somewhat of a fools errand). we are given short time constraints, but seldom asked how long work will take, and when we do it is always too long and needs to be shorter (and when it ends up taking longer than they need it to take, it's always our fault). there is no time for proper documenting, but we get blamed for not documenting (see previous point). Management is constantly screwing me around, saying I'm underperforming on a given task (which is not true, and switching me to a task which is much more confusing). So I must ask my fellow developers: how bad does a job need to be before you would consider jumping ship? And what to look out for when considering taking a job. In future I will be asking about documented procedures, release control, bug management and adoption of new technologies. EDIT: Let me add some more fuel to the fire ... I have been in my current job for just over a year, and the work I am doing almost never uses any of the knowledge I have gained from the other work I have been doing here. Everything is a giant learning curve. Because of this about 30% of my time is learning what is going on with this new product (who's owner / original developer has left the company), 30% trying to find the relevant documentation that helps the whole thing make sense, 30% actually finding where to make the change, 10% actually making the change.

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  • mysql row locking via php

    - by deezee
    I am helping a friend with a web based form that is for their business. I am trying to get it ready to handle multiple users. I have set it up so that just before the record is displayed for editing I am locking the record with the following code. $query = "START TRANSACTION;"; mysql_query($query); $query = "SELECT field FROM table WHERE ID = \"$value\" FOR UPDATE;"; mysql_query($query); (okay that is greatly simplified but that is the essence of the mysql) It does not appear to be working. However, when I go directly to mysql from the command line, logging in with the same user and execute START TRANSACTION; SELECT field FROM table WHERE ID = "40" FOR UPDATE; I can effectively block the web form from accessing record "40" and get the timeout warning. I have tried using BEGIN instead of START TRANSACTION. I have tried doing SET AUTOCOMMIT=0 first and starting the transaction after locking but I cannot seem to lock the row from the PHP code. Since I can lock the row from the command line I do not think there is a problem with how the database is set up. I am really hoping that there is some simple something that I have missed in my reading. FYI, I am developing on XAMPP version 1.7.3 which has Apache 2.2.14, MySQL 5.1.41 and PHP 5.3.1. Thanks in advance. This is my first time posting but I have gleaned alot of knowledge from this site in the past.

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  • PHP array value becomes blank. What is going on?

    - by Michael Bruce
    I have written a web page that works fine expect for some weird behavior. The code below gets all expected values and populates them correctly except for $v-data["quick_phone_id"] and $v-data["quick_email_id"] which are integers. Those values come out blank in the string I am creating. The value for $v-data["id"] is another integer and works as expected. My only clue is that when I uncomment the commented out line, the code works properly. So I'm guessing this has to do with referencing getting broken for the array. Any ideas? I'd like to fix my code and my PHP knowledge. $contacts = ContactInfo::loadMyContacts($userId); $sb = new StringBuilder(); $idx = 0; //$vals = "vals: ".$contacts[0]->data["quick_phone_id"]; $sb->append(' dataRows = ['); foreach($contacts as $k => $v) { $sb->append('{ id:"'.strval($v->data["id"]).'",'); $sb->append('url:"edit_contact.php?id='.$v->data["id"].'",'); $sb->append('gname:"'.$v->data["given_name"].'",'); $sb->append('fname:"'.$v->data["family_name"].'",'); $sb->append('phone1id2:"'.strval($v->data["quick_phone_id"]).'",'); $sb->append('phone1type:"'.$v->data["quick_phone_type"].'",'); $sb->append('phone1:"'.$v->data["quick_phone"].'",'); $sb->append("email1id2:'".strval($v->data["quick_email_id"])."',"); $sb->append('email1type:"'.$v->data["quick_email_type"].'",'); $sb->append("email1:'".$v->data["quick_email"]."',"); $sb->append("dirty:false },\n"); } $sb->append('];');

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  • Is it a good idea to use an integer column for storing US ZIP codes in a database?

    - by Yadyn
    From first glance, it would appear I have two basic choices for storing ZIP codes in a database table: Text (probably most common), i.e. char(5) or varchar(9) to support +4 extension Numeric, i.e. 32-bit integer Both would satisfy the requirements of the data, if we assume that there are no international concerns. In the past we've generally just gone the text route, but I was wondering if anyone does the opposite? Just from brief comparison it looks like the integer method has two clear advantages: It is, by means of its nature, automatically limited to numerics only (whereas without validation the text style could store letters and such which are not, to my knowledge, ever valid in a ZIP code). This doesn't mean we could/would/should forgo validating user input as normal, though! It takes less space, being 4 bytes (which should be plenty even for 9-digit ZIP codes) instead of 5 or 9 bytes. Also, it seems like it wouldn't hurt display output much. It is trivial to slap a ToString() on a numeric value, use simple string manipulation to insert a hyphen or space or whatever for the +4 extension, and use string formatting to restore leading zeroes. Is there anything that would discourage using int as a datatype for US-only ZIP codes?

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  • Is learning C++ a good idea?

    - by chang
    The more I hear and read about C++ (e.g. this: http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/), I get the impression, that I'd waste my time learning C++. I some wrote network routing algorithm in C++ for a simulator, and it was a pain (as expected, especially coming from a perl/python/Java background ...). I'm never happy about giving up on some technology, but I would be happy, if I could limit my knowledge of C-family languages to just C, C# and Objective-C (even OS Xs Cocoa, which is huge and takes a lot of time to learn looks like joy compared to C++ ...). Do I need to consider myself dumb or unwilling, just because I'm not partial to the pain involved learning this stuff? Technologies advance and there will be options other than C++, when deciding on implementation languages, or not? And for speed: If speed were that critical, I'd go for a plain C implementation instead, or write C extensions for much more productive languages like ruby or python ... The one-line version of the above: Will C++ stay such a relevant language that every committed programmer should be familiar with it? [ edit / thank you very much for your interesting and useful answers so far .. ] [ edit / .. i am accepting the top-rated answer; thanks again for all answers! ]

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  • What's the next steps for moving from appengine to full django?

    - by tomcritchlow
    Hey guys, I'm super new to programming and I've been using appengine to help me learn python and general coding. I'm getting better quickly and I'm loving it all the way :) Appengine was awesome for allowing me to just dive into writing my app and getting something live that works (see http://www.7bks.com/). But I'm realising that the longer I continue to learn on appengine the more I'm constraining myself and locking myself into a single system. I'd like to move to developing on full django (since django looks super cool!). What are my next steps? To give you a feel for my level of knowledge: I'm not a unix user I'm not familiar with command line controls (I still use appengine/python completely via the appengine SDK) I've never programmed in anything other than python, anywhere other than appengine I know the word SQL, but don't know what MySQL is really or how to use it. So, specifically: What are the skills I need to learn to get up and running with full django/python? If I'm going to host somewhere else I suppose I'll need to learn some sysadmin type skills (maybe even unix?). Is there anywhere that offers easy hosting (like appengine) but that supports django? I hear such great things about heroku I'm considering switching to RoR and going there I appreciate that I'm likely not quite ready to move away from appengine just yet but I'm a fiercely passionate learner (http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001) and would love it if I knew all the steps I needed to learn so I could set about learning them. At the moment, I don't even know what the steps are I need to learn! Thank you very much. Sorry this isn't a specific programming question but I've looked around and haven't found a good how-to for someone of my level of experience and I think others would appreciate a good roadmap for the things we need to learn to get up and running. Thanks, Tom PS - if anyone is in London and fancies showing me the ropes in person that would be super awesome :)

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  • What should i do for accomodating large scale data storage and retrieval?

    - by kailashbuki
    There's two columns in the table inside mysql database. First column contains the fingerprint while the second one contains the list of documents which have that fingerprint. It's much like an inverted index built by search engines. An instance of a record inside the table is shown below; 34 "doc1, doc2, doc45" The number of fingerprints is very large(can range up to trillions). There are basically following operations in the database: inserting/updating the record & retrieving the record accoring to the match in fingerprint. The table definition python snippet is: self.cursor.execute("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `fingerprint` (fp BIGINT, documents TEXT)") And the snippet for insert/update operation is: if self.cursor.execute("UPDATE `fingerprint` SET documents=CONCAT(documents,%s) WHERE fp=%s",(","+newDocId, thisFP))== 0L: self.cursor.execute("INSERT INTO `fingerprint` VALUES (%s, %s)", (thisFP,newDocId)) The only bottleneck i have observed so far is the query time in mysql. My whole application is web based. So time is a critical factor. I have also thought of using cassandra but have less knowledge of it. Please suggest me a better way to tackle this problem.

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  • how does Cocoa compare to Microsoft, Qt?

    - by Paperflyer
    I have done a few months of development with Qt (built GUI programatically only) and am now starting to work with Cocoa. I have to say, I love Cocoa. A lot of the things that seemed hard in Qt are easy with Cocoa. Obj-C seems to be far less complex than C++. This is probably just me, so: Ho do you feel about this? How does Cocoa compare to WPF (is that the right framework?) to Qt? How does Obj-C compare to C# to C++? How does XCode/Interface Builder compare to Visual Studio to Qt Creator? How do the Documentations compare? For example, I find Cocoa's Outlets/Actions far more useful than Qt's Signals and Slots because they actually seem to cover most GUI interactions while I had to work around Signals/Slots half the time. (Did I just use them wrong?) Also, the standard templates of XCode give me copy/paste, undo/redo, save/open and a lot of other stuff practically for free while these were rather complex tasks in Qt. Please only answer if you have actual knowledge of at least two of these development environments/frameworks/languages.

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  • How to catch YouTube embed code and turn into URL

    - by Jonathan Vanasco
    I need to strip YouTube embed codes down to their URL only. This is the exact opposite of all but one question on StackOverflow. Most people want to turn the URL into an embed code. This question addresses the usage patttern I want, but is tied to a specific embed code's regex ( Strip YouTube Embed Code Down to URL Only ) I'm not familiar with how YouTube has offered embeds over the years - or how the sizes differ. According to their current site, there are 2 possible embed templates and a variety of options. If that's it, I can handle a regex myself -- but I was hoping someone had more knowledge they could share, so I could write a proper regex pattern that matches them all and not run into endless edge-cases. The full use case scenario : user enters content in web based wysiwig editor backend cleans out youtube & other embed codes; reformats approved embeds into an internal format as the text is all converted to markdown. on display, appropriate current template/code display for youtube or other 3rd party site is generated At a previous company, our tech-team devised a plan where YouTube videos were embedded by listing the URL only. That worked great , but it was in a CMS where everyone was trained. I'm trying to create a similar storage, but for user-generated-content.

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  • Ajax with Jsf 1.1 implementation

    - by Rohan Ved
    I am using JSF1.1 in that, have this code_ <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" prefix="h"%> <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" prefix="f"%> <%@ taglib uri="http://www.azureworlds.org" prefix="azure"%> <%@ taglib uri="http://myfaces.apache.org/tomahawk" prefix="x"%> <%@ taglib uri="http://www.asifqamar.com/jsf/asif" prefix="a"%> ... <x:selectOneMenu value="#{hotelBean.state}"> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Select One" itemValue="" /> <f:selectItem value="#{hotelBean.mapStates }" /> <x:ajax update="city" listener="#{hotelBean.handleCityChange}" /> </x:selectOneMenu> <h:outputText value="City* " /> <x:selectOneMenu id="city" value="#{hotelBean.city}"> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Select One" itemValue="" /> <f:selectItem value="#{hotelBean.mapCities }" /> </x:selectOneMenu> line x:ajax update="city" listener="#{hotelBean.handleCityChange}" is not working , i searched but got JSF1.1 not support for Ajax. then what can i do for this? and i have less knowledge of JS. Thanx

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  • This is a great job opportunity!!! [closed]

    - by Stuart Gordon
    ASP.NET MVC Web Developer / London / £450pd / £25-£50,000pa / Interested contact [email protected] ! As a web developer within the engineering department, you will work with a team of enthusiastic developers building a new ASP.NET MVC platform for online products utilising exciting cutting edge technologies and methodologies (elements of Agile, Scrum, Lean, Kanban and XP) as well as developing new stand-alone web products that conform to W3C standards. Key Responsibilities and Objectives: Develop ASP.NET MVC websites utilising Frameworks and enterprise search technology. Develop and expand content management and delivery solutions. Help maintain and extend existing products. Formulate ideas and visions for new products and services. Be a proactive part of the development team and provide support and assistance to others when required. Qualification/Experience Required: The ideal candidate will have a web development background and be educated to degree level in a Computer Science/IT related course plus ASP.NET MVC experience. The successful candidate needs to be able to demonstrate commercial experience in all or most of the following skills: Essential: ASP.NET MVC with C# (Visual Studio), Castle, nHibernate, XHTML and JavaScript. Experience of Test Driven Development (TDD) using tools such as NUnit. Preferable: Experience of Continuous Integration (TeamCity and MSBuild), SQL Server (T-SQL), experience of source control such as Subversion (plus TortioseSVN), JQuery. Learn: Fluent NHibernate, S#arp Architecture, Spark (View engine), Behaviour Driven Design (BDD) using MSpec. Furthermore, you will possess good working knowledge of W3C web standards, web usability, web accessibility and understand the basics of search engine optimisation (SEO). You will also be a quick learner, have good communication skills and be a self-motivated and organised individual.

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  • I can learn either C or Java, which one should I choose first? Should I take them concurrently?

    - by GR1000
    I realize this is a subject of hot debate, but I'm interested in opinions that relate to my specific situation. I want to learn the basics and fundamentals of programming, so I'm already taking a college course in general programming concepts. It isn't covering a specific language, but it's giving me a solid foundation that I can build upon when I move on to a class that teaches a specific language. My two options for a specific language are Java and C because those are the two languages taught at the college I want to take classes from. What I want to do is learn a complex language so that I can apply that knowledge to languages that I use, or will eventually use, in my current job building web pages: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, XML, ActionScript. I'm not necessariy interested in becoming a Java developer or a C developer in the immediate future, but I do have aspirations of developing web applications and iPod/iPhone applications. So, basically, I'm looking for answers to these questions and the reasoning behind them: Do I take the introductory course in Java first, and then take the intro course in C, or Do I take C first and then take Java? Is there any reason not to take them concurrently? Should I skip C altogether as Java covers everything I need to know? EDIT: Thanks everyone for your thoughtful and insightful responses.

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  • Apache + Passenger not passing on custom status codes

    - by harm
    I'm currently building an API. This API communicates with the client via status codes. I created several custom status codes (as per http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec6.html#sec6) in order to inform the client on certain things. For example I introduced the 481 status code to signify a specific client error. The Rails app I wrote works like a charm. But when Apache and Passenger are serving it things run aground. When I provoke a 481 error the response header looks like this: HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 06:37:05 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) Phusion_Passenger/2.2.5 mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 2.2.5 Cache-Control: no-cache X-Runtime: 1938 Set-Cookie: _session_id=32bc259dc763193ad57ae7dc19d5f57e; path=/; HttpOnly Content-Length: 62 Status: 481 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 As you can see the original Status header is still there almost a the end. But the 'true' status header (the very first line) is quiet different. It seems that Apache doesn't like Status headers it has no knowledge of and thus assumes an error. Is there anyway to fix this? Maybe via the mod_headers ( http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_headers.html) module? I don't know enough of Apache to figure this out on my own. Thanks,

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  • Why does Android allocate more memory than needed when loading images

    - by Simon
    Folks, I don't think that this is a duplicate and is NOT one of those how do I avoid OOMs questions. This is a genuine quest for knowledge so hold off on those down votes please... Imagine I have a JPEG of 500x500 pixels. I load it as ARGB_8888 which is as "bad as it gets". I would expect Android to allocate 500x500x4 bytes = a little under 1MB however, look at a heap dump and you will see that Android allocates significantly more, often factors of 5-10 times greater. You frequently see questions on here about OOMS where the stack trace shows a heap request of say 15MB and it is ALWAYS much larger than is required simply to hold the bytes of the image. The OP usually catches some downvotes then is bombarded with stock answers and comments about using less memory (thanks Romain!) and in scaling. I think there is more than meets the eye here. Anybody know why this is? If there is no apparent answer, I will put together an SSCCE if it helps. PS. I assume that JPEG vs PNG etc is irrelevant since we're talking about the memory usage of the backing bitmap which is simply x times y times BPP - or am I being slow?

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  • Are UTF16 (as used by for example wide-winapi functions) characters always 2 byte long?

    - by Cray
    Please clarify for me, how does UTF16 work? I am a little confused, considering these points: There is a static type in C++, WCHAR, which is 2 bytes long. (always 2 bytes long obvisouly) Most of msdn and some other documentation seem to have the assumptions that the characters are always 2 bytes long. This can just be my imagination, I can't come up with any particular examples, but it just seems that way. There are no "extra wide" functions or characters types widely used in C++ or windows, so I would assume that UTF16 is all that is ever needed. To my uncertain knowledge, unicode has a lot more characters than 65535, so they obvisouly don't have enough space in 2 bytes. UTF16 seems to be a bigger version of UTF8, and UTF8 characters can be of different lengths. So if a UTF16 character not always 2 bytes long, how long else could it be? 3 bytes? or only multiples of 2? And then for example if there is a winapi function that wants to know the size of a wide string in characters, and the string contains 2 characters which are each 4 bytes long, how is the size of that string in characters calculated? Is it 2 chars long or 4 chars long? (since it is 8 bytes long, and each WCHAR is 2 bytes)

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  • WPF - Transparency - Stream Desktop Content

    - by Niels Willems
    Greetings I'm in the process of making a Scoreboard for a game (Starcraft II). This scoreboard is being made as a WPF Application with a C# code-behind. I already have a version which works for 90% in WinForms but I lacked the support to easily make it look a lot nicer which are available in WPF. The point of this application will be to form a kind of overlay on top of a running game. This game is in Fulscreen(Windowed Mode) so when in WinForms I coded it so that it should always be on top. It would do so and that was no problem. Since the main look of the app in WPF is based on an image with a transparent background I have set most Background values to Transparent. However when I do this the entire application does not get registered by streaming software. For example it just shows my Desktop or the game I'm playing but not my application even though it IS there. I can see it with my own eyes but the audience on the stream cannot. Does anyone have any experience with this matter because it's really doing my head in. My entire application will be useless if it is not visible on streams. If I have to put the background on a color rather than transparent the UI will be completely demolished as well in terms of looks. I'm basically trying to make a game-overlay in C# & WPF. I have read you can do this on different ways as well but I have little to no knowledge of C++ nor do I know anything about DirectX Thank you for your time reading and your possible insights. Edit: The best solution would be an overlay similar to that one of Steam/Xfire/Dolby Axon. Edit 2: I've had no luck with all the suggestions so I basically made the transparent bits of my image non transparent and let the user decide which one to use depending on what streaming software they would be using.

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  • C# Retrieving Data From XML File

    - by Christopher MacKinnon
    I seem to be having a problem with retrieving XML values with C#, which I know it is due to my very limited knowledge of C# and .XML. I was given the following XML file <PowerBuilderRunTimes> <PowerBuilderRunTime> <Version>12</Version> <Files> <File>EasySoap110.dll</File> <File>exPat110.dll</File> <File>pbacc110.dll</File> </File> </PowerBuilderRunTime> </PowerBuilderRunTimes> I am to process the XML file and make sure that each of the files in the exist in the folder (that's the easy part). It's the processing of the XML file that I have having a hard time with. Here is what I have done thus far: var runtimeXml = File.ReadAllText(string.Format("{0}\\{1}", configPath, Resource.PBRuntimes)); var doc = XDocument.Parse(runtimeXml); var topElement = doc.Element("PowerBuilderRunTimes"); var elements = topElement.Elements("PowerBuilderRunTime"); foreach (XElement section in elements) { //pbVersion is grabbed earlier. It is the version of PowerBuilder if( section.Element("Version").Value.Equals(string.Format("{0}", pbVersion ) ) ) { var files = section.Elements("Files"); var fileList = new List<string>(); foreach (XElement area in files) { fileList.Add(area.Element("File").Value); } } } My issue is that the String List is only ever populated with one value, "EasySoap110.dll", and everything else is ignored. Can someone please help me, as I am at a loss.

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  • Common "truisms" needing correction the most

    - by Charles Bretana
    In addition to "I never met a man I didn't like", Will Rogers had another great little ditty I've always remembered. It went: "It's not what you don't know that'll hurt you, it's what you do know that ain't so." We all know or subscribe to many IT "truisms" that mostly have a strong basis in fact, in something in our professional careers, something we learned from others, lessons learned the hard way by ourselves, or by others who came before us. Unfortuntely, as these truisms spread throughout the community, the details—why they came about and the caveats that affect when they apply—tend to not spread along with them. We all have a tendency to look for, and latch on to, small "rules" or principles that we can use to avoid doing a complete exhaustive analysis for every decision. But even though they are correct much of the time, when we sometimes misapply them, we pay a penalty that could be avoided by understooding the details behind them. For example, when user-defined functions were first introduced in SQL Server it became "common knowledge" within a year or so that they had extremely bad performance (because it required a re-compilation for each use) and should be avoided. This "trusim" still increases many database developers' aversion to using UDFs, even though Microsoft's introduction of InLine UDFs, which do not suffer from this issue at all, mitigates this issue substantially. In recent years I have run into numerous DBAs who still believe you should "never" use UDFs, because of this. What other common not-so-"trusims" do you know, which many developers believe, that are not quite as universally true as is commonly understood, and which the developer community would benefit from being better educated about? Please include why it was "true" to start off with, and under what circumstances it's not true. Limit responses to issues that are technical, where the "common" application of a "rule or principle" is in fact correct most of the time, or was correct back when it was first elucidated, but—in the edge cases, or because of not understanding the principle thoroughly, because technology has changed since it first spread, or applying the rule today without understanding the details behind the rule—can easily backfire or cause the opposite of the intended effect.

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  • How do you work around memcached's key/value limitations?

    - by mjy
    Memcached has length limitations for keys (250?) and values (roughtly 1MB), as well as some (to my knowledge) not very well defined character restrictions for keys. What is the best way to work around those in your opinion? I use the Perl API Cache::Memcached. What I do currently is store a special string for the main key's value if the original value was too big ("parts:<number") and in that case, I store <number parts with keys named 1+<main key, 2+<main key etc.. This seems "OK" (but messy) for some cases, not so good for others and it has the intrinsic problem that some of the parts might be missing at any time (so space is wasted for keeping the others and time is wasted reading them). As for the key limitations, one could probably implement hashing and store the full key (to work around collisions) in the value, but I haven't needed to do this yet. Has anyone come up with a more elegant way, or even a Perl API that handles arbitrary data sizes (and key values) transparently? Has anyone hacked the memcached server to support arbitrary keys/values?

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  • Will a Ph. D. in Computer Science help?

    - by Francisco Garcia
    I am close to my 30s and still learning about programming and software engineering. Like most people who like their profession I truly believe that I should aim to improve and keep updated. One of the things I do is reading technical papers from professional publications (IEEE and ACM) but I admit there are very good bloggers out there too. Lately I started to think (should I say realize?) that Ph. D people actually are expected to expand constantly their knowledge, but little is expected from lower classes once they know enough This made me think that maybe having a Ph. D will help to have more... respect? but I also believe that I am already getting old for that. Futhermore I see many master and doctor programs that does not seem to add any value over hard experience and self learning. I belive that a degree in computer science, althought not necessary, can lay out a good base for programming work. However: What can a Ph. D. degree give you that you cannot learn on your own? (if you are not into something VERY specific and want to work in a non academic environment)

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  • What does it mean to say "Instance variables are not over-rided" in java?

    - by Ankit
    I am aware of the concept called field hiding in java. But still I am having a confusion in relation to instance variable being not over-ridden. According to my present knowledge, overriding a method of super-class means that the JVM will call the sub-class's over-ridden method though the super-class's method is available to the sub-class. And I read the similar thing for field hiding via the link:- Hiding Fields So, in any case we are over-ridding the instance if we change the values of the inherited instance variable in the sub-class. I am confused please help. I am using the following super-class:- public class Animal{ File picture; String food; int hunger; int width, height; int xcoord, ycoord; public void makeNoise(){ ......... } public void eat(){ ............. } public void sleep(){ .......... } public void roam(){ ............. } } It has sub-classes like Tiger, cat, dog,hippo etc. The sub-classes over-ride the makeNoise(), eat and roam() method. But each sub-class also uses a different set of values for instance variables. So as per my confusion, I am kind-of overriding all the instance variables and 3 methods of the super-class Animal; and I still have the super-class instance variables available to the sub-class with the use of the super keyword.

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  • Is there a best practice for concatenating MP3 Files, adjusting sample rates to match, while preserving original files?

    - by Scott
    Hello overflow community! Does anyone know if there is a "best practice" to concatenate mp3 files to create new files, while preserving the original files? I am working on a CentOS Linux machine, in command line. I will eventually call the command line from a PHP script. I have been doing research and I have come up with a process that I think could work. It combines general advice from different forums, blogs, and sources like this one. So here I go: Create a temporary folder Loop through files to create a new, converted copy, of file into a "raw" format (which one, I don't know. I didn't know "raw" files existed before too long ago. I could use some suggestions on this) Store the path to the temporary files, in the temporary folder, and then loop through the files to concatenate them and then put the new merged file the final "processed directory" Delete the contents of the temporary file with the temporary raw files inside. Convert the final file from "raw" to mp3 and enjoy the finished result I'm thinking that this course of action might be best because I can't necessarily control the quality of the original "source" mp3s. The only other option I could think of would be to create a script that would perform a similar process upon files being added to the system leaving only the files with the "proper" format and removing the original "erroneous" file. Hopefully you can see that I have put some thought into this and that I'm trying to leverage the collective knowledge of this community to choose the best direction. Perhaps there is a better path that I could take? By concatenate, I mean to join together in sequence to create a new audio file from the "concatenated files."

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