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• Statistical analysis on large data set to be published on the web

  - by dassouki

  I have a non-computer related data logger, that collects data from the field. This data is stored as text files, and I manually lump the files together and organize them. The current format is through a csv file per year per logger. Each file is around 4,000,000 lines x 7 loggers x 5 years = a lot of data. some of the data is organized as bins item_type, item_class, item_dimension_class, and other data is more unique, such as item_weight, item_color, date_collected, and so on ... Currently, I do statistical analysis on the data using a python/numpy/matplotlib program I wrote. It works fine, but the problem is, I'm the only one who can use it, since it and the data live on my computer. I'd like to publish the data on the web using a postgres db; however, I need to find or implement a statistical tool that'll take a large postgres table, and return statistical results within an adequate time frame. I'm not familiar with python for the web; however, I'm proficient with PHP on the web side, and python on the offline side. users should be allowed to create their own histograms, data analysis. For example, a user can search for all items that are blue shipped between week x and week y, while another user can search for sort the weight distribution of all items by hour for all year long. I was thinking of creating and indexing my own statistical tools, or automate the process somehow to emulate most queries. This seemed inefficient. I'm looking forward to hearing your ideas Thanks

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• Visual Studio: Collapse Methods, but not Comments (Summary etc.)

  - by Alex

  Hello, is there a way (settings? "macro"? extension?) that I can simply toggle outlining so that only the using section and my methods collapse to their signature line, but my comments (summary and double slash comments) and classes stay expanded? Examples: 1) Uncollapsed using System; using MachineGun; namespace Animals { /// <summary> /// Angry animal /// Pretty Fast, too /// </summary> public partial class Lion { // // Dead or Alive public Boolean Alive; /// <summary> /// Bad bite /// </summary> public PieceOfAnimal Bite(Animal animalToBite) { return animalToBite.Shoulder; } /// <summary> /// Fatal bite /// </summary> public PieceOfAnimal Kill(Animal animalToKill) { return animalToKill.Head; } } } 2) Collapsed (the following is my desired result): using[...] namespace Animals { /// <summary> /// Angry animal /// Pretty Fast, too /// </summary> public partial class Lion { // // Dead or Alive public Boolean Alive; /// <summary> /// Bad bite /// </summary> public PieceOfAnimal Bite(Animal animalToBite)[...] /// <summary> /// Fatal bite /// </summary> public PieceOfAnimal Kill(Animal animalToKill)[...] } } This is how I prefer seeing my class files (the collapsed form). I've been doing the collapsing by hand a million times by now and I think there should be a way to automate/customize/extend VS to do it the way I want? Every time I debug/hit a breakpoint, it uncollapses and messes up things. If I collapse via the context menu's collapse to outline etc. it also collapses my comments which isn't desired. Appreciate your help!

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• Converting Source ASCII Files to JPEGs

  - by CommonsWare

  I publish technical books, in print, PDF, and Kindle/MOBI, with EPUB on the way. The Kindle does not support monospace fonts, which are kinda useful for source code listings. The only way to do monospace fonts is to convert the text (Java source, HTML, XML, etc.) into JPEG images. More specifically, due to pagination issues, a given input ASCII file needs to be split into slices of ~6 lines each, with each slice turned into a JPEG, so listings can span a screen. This is a royal pain. My current mechanism to do that involves: Running expand to set a consistent 2-space tab size, which pipes to... a2ps, which pipes to... A small Perl snippet to add a "%%LanguageLevel: 3\n" line, which pipes to... ImageMagick's convert, to take the (E)PS and make a JPEG out it, with an appropriate background, cropped to 575x148+5+28, etc. That used to work 100% of the time. It now works 95% of the time. The rest of the time, I get convert: geometry does not contain image errors, which I cannot seem to get rid of, in part because I don't understand what the problem is. Before this process, I used to use a pretty-print engine (source-highlight) to get HTML out of the source code...but then the only thing I could find to convert the HTML into JPEGs was to automate screen-grabs from an embedded Gecko engine. Reliability stank, which is why I switched to my current mechanism. So, if you were you, and you needed to turn source listings into JPEG images, in an automated fashion, how would you do it? Bonus points if it offers some sort of pretty-print process (e.g., bolded keywords)! Or, if you know what typically causes convert: geometry does not contain image, that might help. My current process is ugly, but if I could get it back to 100% reliability, that'd be just fine for now. Thanks in advance!

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• Need a piece of advice about e-mail automation in ms exchange + ms office environment

  - by be here now

  Hi, guys. I need your help in the following simple situation. I've got an MS Exchange server and some client computers running on XP with Office 2003 installed. And I've got a process I need to automate. Twice a day a known list of people sends an e-mail to a certain mailbox (let's call it manager's mailbox) - basically, an accomplishment report. After recieving letters from all of these people the mailbox owner sends and e-mail to another mailbox, meaning that a certain process is done. What I need to do is to replace this manager's mailbox with a depersonalized mailbox that will accumulate all the reports and automatically send a message after collecting all of them. I am definitely not in a "oh my God, what shold I do?" situation, and currently my imagination shows me a couple of ways to solve this problem, which I'm going to try, and I'm not ascking for a ready solution. But since I'm not experienced in Office/VBA developement, I'd like to ask a corresponding pro's opinion. Can you point me to a right direction from the best practices' point of view?

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• XML Doc to JSP to TIFF

  - by SPD

  We have around 100 word templates, every time user gets a business request he goes into shared folder select the template he/she wants and enter information and save it as tiff, these tiffs later processed by some batch program. I am trying to automate this process. So I defined an XML which has Template information like <Template id="1"> <Section id="1"> <fieldName id="1">Date</fieldName> <fieldValue></fieldValue> <fieldtype></fieldType> <fieldProperty>textField</fieldProperty> </Section> <Section id="2"> <fieldName id="2">Claim#</fieldName> <fieldValue></fieldValue> <fieldtype></fieldType> <fieldProperty>textField</fieldProperty> </Section> </Template> Based on the template values I generate the JSP on fly. Now I would like to generate a TIFF file out of it in specified format. I am not sure how to handle this requirement. *edited the original question.

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• What's an effective way to move data from one open browser tab to another?

  - by slk

  I am looking for a quick way to grab some data off of one Web page and throw it into another. I don't have access to the query string in the URL of the second page, so passing the data that way is not an option. Right now, I am using a Greasemonkey user script in tandem with a JS bookmarklet trigger: javascript:doIt(); // ==UserScript== // @include public_site // @include internal_site // ==/UserScript== if (document.location.host.match(internal_site)) { var datum1 = GM_getValue("d1"); var datum2 = GM_getValue("d2"); } unsafeWindow.doIt = function() { if(document.location.host.match(public_site)) { var d1 = innerHTML of page element 1; var d2 = innerHTML of page element 2; //Next two lines use setTimeout to bypass GM_setValue restriction window.setTimeout(function() {GM_setValue("d1", d1);}, 0); window.setTimeout(function() {GM_setValue("d2", d2);}, 0); } else if(document.location.host.match(internal_site)) { document.getElementById("field1").value = datum1; document.getElementById("field2").value = datum2; } } While I am open to another method, I would prefer to stay with this basic model if possible, as this is just a small fraction of the code in doIt() which is used on several other pages, mostly to automate date-based form fills; people really like their "magic button." The above code works, but there's an interruption to the workflow: In order for the user to know which page on the public site to grab data from, the internal page has to be opened first. Then, once the GM cookie is set from the public page, the internal page has to be reloaded to get the proper information into the internal page variables. I'm wondering if there's any way to GM_getValue() at bookmarklet-clicktime to prevent the need for a refresh. Thanks!

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• How to check a file saving is complete using Python?

  - by indrajithk

  I am trying to automate a downloading process. In this I want to know, whether a particular file's save is completed or not. The scenario is like this. Open a site address using either Chrome or Firefox (any browser) Save the page to disk using 'Crtl + S' (I work on windows) Now if the page is very big, then it takes few seconds to save. I want to parse the html once the save is complete. Since I don't have control on the browser save functionality, I don't know whether the save has completed or not. One idea I thought, is to get the md5sum of the file using a while loop, and check against the previous one calculated, and continue the while loop till the md5 sum from the previous and current one matches. This doesn't works I guess, as it seems browser first attempts to save the file in a tmp file and then copies the content to the specified file (or just renames the file). Any ideas? I use python for the automation, hence any idea which can be implemented using python is welcome. Thanks Indrajith

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• Capacity Allocation

  - by user1708730

  I am new to VB in Excel. I have a unique requirement for capacity allocation which I want to automate using excel VB and facing hard time doing so, hope you can help. The objective is to maximize profit by allocating maximum capacity to those products which have highest profit potential first. Every Month I get demand along with backlogs of previous month. I need to allocate capacity to backlogs of previous month first and then only the remaining capacity for fresh demand. There are two primary constraints: 1.The number of working days in a month (variable) 2. Not all products can be made on every production line and out of same product may be different for each production line Also there will be losses whenever there is a change over from one SKU to another depending upon the Variant Type and size of next product. If there is variant change then 8 hours of production loss needs to be accounted and 4 hours in case of size change(8 hours in case of both). I have attached sample data(Actual data has 10 production lines and 50 products) https://rapidshare.com/files/1822719405/Sample%20Data.xlsx?bin=1 Thanks in advance for help!

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• Help me refactor my World Cup Challenge Script

  - by kylemac

  I am setting up a World Cup Challenge between some friends, and decided to practice my Ruby and write a small script to automate the process. The Problem: 32 World Cup qualifiers split into 4 tiers by their Fifa ranking 8 entries Each entry is assigned 1 random team per tier Winner takes all :-) I wrote something that suffices yet is admittedly brute force. But, in my attempt to improve my Ruby, I acknowlege that this code isn't the most elegant solution around - So I turn to you, the experts, to show me the way. It may be more clear to check out this gist - https://gist.github.com/91e1f1c392bed8074531 My Current (poor) solution: require 'yaml' @teams = YAML::load(File.open('teams.yaml')) @players = %w[Player1 Player2 Player3 Player4 Player5 Player6 Player7 Player8] results = Hash.new players = @players.sort_by{rand} players.each_with_index do |p, i| results[p] = Array[@teams['teir_one'][i]] end second = @players.sort_by{rand} second.each_with_index do |p, i| results[p] << @teams['teir_two'][i] end third = @players.sort_by{rand} third.each_with_index do |p, i| results[p] << @teams['teir_three'][i] end fourth = @players.sort_by{rand} fourth.each_with_index do |p, i| results[p] << @teams['teir_four'][i] end p results I am sure there is a better way to iterate through the tiers, and duplicating the @players object ( dup() or clone() maybe?) So from one Cup Fan to another, help me out.

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• Automatically Organize Tags in Tax/Folksonomy

  - by Rob Wilkerson

  I'm working on a process that will perform natural language processing (NLP) on one--and potentially several--of our content rich sites. What I'd like to do once the NLP is complete is to automatically organize the output (generally a set of terms that you might think of as tags given the prevalence of that metaphor) into some kind of standard or generally accepted organizational structure. In a perfect world, I'd really like this to be crowd sourced under the folksonomy concept (as opposed to a taxonomy) since the ultimate goal is to target/appeal to real people rather than "domain experts", but I'm open to ideas and best practices. For the obvious purpose of scalability, I'd like to automate the population of this tax/folksonomy so that "some guy" in the team/organization isn't responsible for looking at a bunch of words (with or without context) and arbitrarily fleshing out the contextual components of the tree. I have a few ideas for doing this that require some research to establish viability, but I have exactly zero practical experience with this sort of thing so the ideas really just boil down to stuff I made up that might perform some role in accomplishing the task. Imagining that others have vastly more experience with this sort of thing, I'm hoping that I can stand on your shoulders. Thanks for your thoughts and insights.

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• Maven build issue with Hibernate for Windows

  - by wishi_

  Hi! I'm getting build errors for for my Maven enabled project related to the Hibernate extension. - It's a very basic app, and I was able to solve this issue on my Linux box by manually installing some required artifacts: mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=javassist -DartifactId=javassist -Dversion=3.9.0 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=foo.jar That worked out (Hibernate as a set of required deps). But in case of Windows things are different. How do I add the dependencies manually to Maven on Windows? 1) org.hibernate:hibernate:jar:3.3.2 Try downloading the file manually from the project website. Then, install it using the command: mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=org.hibernate -DartifactId=hibernate -Dversion=3.3.2 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=/path/to/file 2) javassist:javassist:jar:3.9.0 Can I automate this cumbersome manual dependency installation for my coworkers on their Windows machines? Are there any helpful tools or GUI that can perform these tasks? The best way would be that Maven does it all automatically. I'm not too familiar with it jet. Thanks for answers.

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• Finding patterns of failure in a Unit Test

  - by Pekka

  I'm new to Unit Testing, and I'm only getting into the routine of building test suites. I have what is going to be a rather large project that I want to build tests for from the start. I'm trying to figure out general strategies and patterns for building test suites. When you look at a class, many tests come to you obviously due to the nature of the class. Say for a "user account" class with basic CRUD operations, being related to a database table, we will want to test - well, the CRUD. creating an object and seeing whether it exists query its properties change some properties change some properties to incorrect values and delete it again. As for how to break things, there are "fail" tests common to most CRUD classes like: Invalid input data types A number as the ID key that exceeds the range of the chosen data type Input in an incorrect character encoding Input that is too long And so on and so on. For a unit test concerned with file operations, the list of "breaking things" could be Invalid characters in file name File name too long File name uses incorrect protocol or path I'm pretty sure similar patterns - applicable beyond the unit test one is currently working on - can be found for most units that are being tested. Now my question is: Am I correct in seeing such "breaking patterns"? Or am I getting something completely wrong about Unit testing, and if I did it right, this wouldn't be an issue at all? Is Unit Testing as a process of finding as many ways to break the unit as possible the right way to go? If I am correct: Are there existing definitions, lists, cheat sheets for such patterns? Are there any provisions (mainly in PHPUnit, as that's the framework I'm working in) to automate such patterns? Is there any assistance - in the form of check lists, or software - to aid in writing complete tests?

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• Mono Text Based Web Browser

  - by powerbox

  Hi guys, is there any public text based web browser implementation for C# or on mono base api that I can use to fill up web forms automatically? I'll be using it to automate some web task that does not require any image authentication. I'm currently using a web browser control available on .Net Framework and waits for the event WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventHandler to fire after a page is successfully loaded and invoke some actions like Submit or simulating a mouse click on some links. It actually does the job but I can't process bulk transactions since I needed to wait for the whole page to be loaded together with the images and other stuff. It is easy to use HttpWebRequest to fill up some forms , provide some data and then submit. But on some occasions I only need to simulate a mouse click to a certain link which I don't know how to do with HttpWebRequest. By the way using HttpWebRequest will still download all the images of a web page that I see pointless since I only need to provide correct data back to the server. I hope someone can pinpoint me the correct way of doing this kind of automation and thanks in advance!

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• Are there any free Xml Diff/Merge tools available?

  - by Russell

  I have several config files in my .net applications which I would like to merge application settings elements etc. I was about to begin doing it manually as I usually do, however thought there must be an XML diff GUI tool available somewhere. The tool would be able to go to the element level to compare and display the differences etc. However Google gave no substantive free tool results and no hints for anything of value. Is such a tool available? That is very useful? For free? Thanks in advance. :) Edit: Here is a bit of clarification of the functionality that would turn my error-prone, tedious manual job into a 1-minute simpler task (and potential to automate): In KDiff3, you can do a diff/merge of entire directories. There is a hierarchical diff which is very accurate, user-friendly and clear. I was interested in finding a similar solution, however instead of directory hierarchy, an XML element hierarchy. If there is no such open source software, I am considering creating one on CodePlex to provide this functionality.

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• Right Language for the Job

  - by Manoj

  Using the right language for the job is the key - this is the comment I read in SO and I also belive thats the right thing to do. Because of this we ended up using different languages for different parts of the project - like perl, VBA(Excel Macros), C# etc. We have three to four languages currently in use inside the project. Using the right language for the job has made it immensly more easy to do automate a job, but of late people are complaining that any new person who has to take over the project will have to learn so many different languages to get started. Also it is difficult to find such kind of person. Please note that this is a one to two person working on the project maximum at a given point of time. I would like to know if the method we are following is right or should we converge to single language and try to use it across all the job even though another language might be better suited for it. Your experenece related to this would also help. Languages used and their purpose: Perl - Processing large text file(log files) C# with Silverlight for web based reporting. LabVIEW for automation Excel macros for processing data in excel sheets, generating graphs and exporting to powerpoint.

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• Read data from form

  - by Superhuman

  This is a strange question, I've never tried to do this before. I have a repetitive process requiring that I copy and paste data from text boxes in one program into another program for further processing. I'd like to automate this process using VB .NET. The application from which the data is gathered isn't mine, so I don't have ActiveX-like access to its controls. How would you write an application to gain access to a form from another application, to be able to find the controls on the form, and gather the values from them? Just experimenting, I've used the following code. This resulted in only the name of the form to which this code belongs. It didn't find the names of any other forms I have open, and I have a lot open to choose from. This is frustrating because it's only step one of what I'll need to do to make my life easier... Public Declare Function EnumWindows Lib "user32" (ByVal lpEnumFunc As CallBack, ByVal lParam As Integer) As Integer Public Delegate Function CallBack(ByVal hwnd As IntPtr, ByVal lParam As IntPtr) As Boolean Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Dim cb As New CallBack(AddressOf MyCallBack) EnumWindows(cb, 8) End Sub Public Function MyCallBack(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lparam As Long) As Boolean Dim frm As System.Windows.Forms.Control frm = System.Windows.Forms.Form.FromHandle(hwnd) If frm Is Nothing Then Return True If frm.Text <> "" Then TextBox1.Text += frm.Text & ", " End If Return True End Function Does anyone have a recommendation? Thanks, SH

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• Always send certain values with an ajax request/post

  - by DZittersteyn

  I'm building a system that displays a list of user, and on selection of a user requests some form of password. These values are saved in a hidden field on the page, and need to be sent with every request as a form of authentication. (I'm aware of the MITM-vulnerability that lies herein, but it's a very low-key system, so security is not a large concern). Now I need to send these values with each and every request, to auth the currently 'logged in' user. I'd like to automate this, via ajaxSetup, however i'm running into some issues. My first try was: init_user_auth: function(){ $.ajaxSetup({ data: { 'user' : site_user.selected_user_id(), 'passcode': site_user.selected_user_pc(), 'barcode' : site_user.selected_user_bc() } }); }, However, as I should have known, this reads the values once, at the time of the call to ajaxSetup, and never rereads them. What I need is a way to actually call the functions every time an ajax-call is made. I'm currently trying to understand what is happening here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/jquery-dev/OBcEfgvTJ9I, however through the flamewar and very low-level stuff going on there, I'm not exactly sure I get what is going on. Is this the way to proceed, or should I just face facts and manually add login-info to each ajax-call?

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• MSBuild - How to build a .NET solution file (in an XML task script) from pre-written command line commands

  - by Devtron

  Hello. I have been studying MSBuild as I have the need to automate my development shop's builds. I was able to easily write a .BAT file that invokes the VS command prompt and passes my MSBuild commands to it. This works rather well and is kinda nifty. Here is the contents of my .BAT build file: call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64\vcvars64.bat" cd C:\Sandbox\Solution msbuild MyTopSecretApplication.sln /p:OutputPath=c:\TESTMSBUILDOUTPUT /p:Configuration=Release,Platform=x86 pause ^ This works well but I now have the need to use the MSBuild task for TeamCity CI. I have tried to write a few MSBuild scripts but I cannot get them to work the same. What is the equivalent build script to the command I am using in my .BAT file? Any ideas? I have tried using something like this, but no success (I know this is wrong): <?xml version="1.0"?> <project name="Hello Build World" default="run" basedir="."> <target name="build"> <mkdir dir="mybin" /> <echo>Made mybin directory!</echo> <csc target="exe" output="c:\TESTMSBUILDOUTPUT"> <sources> <include name="MyTopSecretApplication.sln"/> </sources> </csc> <echo>MyTopSecretApplication.exe was built!</echo> </target> <target name="clean"> <delete dir="mybin" failonerror="false"/> </target> <target name="run" depends="build"> <exec program="mybin\MyTopSecretApplication.exe"/> </target> What I simply need is an MSBuild XML build script that compiles a single solution for Release mode to a specified output directory. Any help?

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• Automated generation of the "What's new in this version" reading

  - by lunohodov

  We all know it - this is the reading that lists the changes brought by each new version of our favorite software. Whenever it comes bundled as a file (Changes.txt, CHANGES, WhatsNew.txt, etc) or is presented within an installer this is usually the first thing we read before installing/updating. On a current project we have a Changelog.txt file that gets updated by hand every time a notable change occurs. However this often leads to "I forgot to update the changelog". So I am looking for a way to automate this. I am thinking of a script that extracts the changes from our commit messages (using a convention) and generates the file. For example a commit message like Updated json-glib to 0.7.6 [changes] - Fix crash on Windows - Fix issues with facebook contacts with very large UIDs. Would produce the following Changes.txt Version 1.9.18 (03/10/2010) Fix crash on Windows Fix issues with facebook contacts with very large UIDs. Does anyone know a better solution/tool for this or am I going to write my own? Thanks!

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• jQuery: Finding file size and adding it to the link

  - by Ricardo

  Let me start by saying that I'm not a jQuery guru by any means and I genuinely know this is over my head, that's why I've come to SO. Is there a way with jQuery to find the file size of a link on a page and then inject/add the text of the file size next to the link? Here's my problem On one of my pages, I have a link to my resume which is a PDF file and to improve usability it's proper to have the file type and file size next to the link so the users have the option to decide if they want to click on that link or not. So the link would read something like "Download my resume (PDF / 80KB)" The problem is that I'm constantly updating my resume and uploading a new PDF file which, of course, has a different file size so I'm always going back to the HTML and changing the text to reflect the new file size. Is there a way to automate this with jQuery... or plain JavaScript for that matter? I found this script and made a demo here in Codepen but it doesn't seem to work. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

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• Perl need the right grep operator to match value of variable

  - by iaintunderstand

  I want to see if I have repeated items in my array, there are over 16.000 so will automate it There may be other ways but I started with this and, well, would like to finish it unless there is a straightforward command. What I am doing is shifting and pushing from one array into another and this way, check the destination array to see if it is "in array" (like there is such a command in PHP). So, I got this sub routine and it works with literals, but it doesn't with variables. It is because of the 'eq' or whatever I should need. The 'sourcefile' will contain one or more of the words of the destination array. my @destination = ('hi', 'bye'); sub in_array { my ($destination,$search_for) = @_; return grep {$search_for eq $_} @$destination; } for($i = 0; $i <=100; $i ++) { $elemento = shift @sourcefile; if(in_array(\@destination, $elemento)) { print "it is"; } else { print "it aint there"; } } Well, if instead of including the $elemento in there I put a 'hi' it does work and also I have printed the value of $elemento which is also 'hi', but when I put the variable, it does not work, and that is because of the 'eq', but I don't know what else to put. If I put == it complains that 'hi' is not a numeric value.

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• Calling child constructor by casting (ChildClass)parentObject; to track revisions

  - by FreshCode

  To track revisions of a Page class, I have a PageRevision class which inherits from Page and adds a revision ID (Guid RevisionID;). If possible, how should I cast an existing Page object to a PageRevision and ensure that the PageRevision constructor is called to create a new revision ID? I could could have a PageRevision(Page page) constructor which generates the Guid and copies all the Page attributes, but I want to automate it, especially if a Page class has many attributes (and I later add one, and forget to modify the copy constructor). Desired use Page page = new Page(123, "Page Title", "Page Body"); // where 123 is page ID PageRevision revision = (PageRevision)page; // now revision.RevisionID should be a new Guid. Page, PageRevision classes: public class Page { public int ID { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Body { get; set; } } public class PageRevision : Page { public Guid RevisionID { get; set; } public PageRevision() { this.RevisionID = Guid.NewGuid(); } }

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• Automating the choice between JPEG and PNG with a script

  - by MHC

  Choosing the right format to save your images in is crucial for preserving image quality and reducing artifacts. Different formats follow different compression methods and come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. JPG, for instance is suited for real life photographs that are rich in color gradients. The lossless PNG, on the other hand, is far superior when it comes to schematic figures: Picking the right format can be a chore when working with a large number of files. That's why I would love to find a way to automate it. A little bit of background on my particular use case: I am working on a number of handouts for a series of lectures at my unversity. The handouts are rich in figures, which I have to extract from PDF-formatted slides. Extracting these images gives me lossless PNGs, which are needlessly large at times. Converting these particular files to JPEG can reduce their size to up to less than 20% of their original file size, while maintaining the same quality. This is important as working with hundreds of large images in word processors is pretty crash-prone. Batch converting all extracted PNGs to JPEGs is not an option I am willing to follow, as many if not most images are better suited to be formatted as PNGs. Converting these would result in insignificant size reductions and sometimes even increases in filesize - that's at least what my test runs showed. What we can take from this is that file size after compression can serve as an indicator on what format is suited best for a particular image. It's not a particularly accurate predictor, but works well enough. So why not use it in form of a script: I included inotifywait because I would prefer for the script be executed automatically as soon as I drag an extracted image into a folder. This is a simpler version of the script that I've been using for the last couple of weeks: #!/bin/bash inotifywait -m --format "%w%f" --exclude '.jpg' -r -e create -e moved_to --fromfile '/home/MHC/.scripts/Workflow/Conversion/include_inotifywait' | while read file; do mogrify -format jpg -quality 92 "$file" done The advanced version of the script would have to be able to handle spaces in file names and directory names preserve the original file names flatten PNG images if an alpha value is set compare the file size between the temporary converted image and its original determine if the difference is greater than a given precentage act accordingly The actual conversion could be done with imagemagick tools: convert -quality 92 -flatten -background white file.png file.jpg Unfortunately, my bash skills aren't even close to advanced enough to convert the scheme above into an actual script, but I am sure many of you can. My reputation points on here are pretty low, but I will gladly award the most helpful answer with the highest bounty I can set. References: http://www.formortals.com/introducing-cnb-imageguide/, http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg Edit: Also see my comments below for some more information on why I think this script would be the best solution to the problem I am facing.

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• How to shutdown VMware Fusion virtual machine on host shutdown

  - by Nikksno

  I have a Mac mini running Mavericks server. I installed the Atmail server + webmail vm [a linux centos distribution] in VMware Fusion Professional 6 with the VMware Tools addon. It works flawlessly. I've set it to start on boot and that works very reliably. However I've been looking for a way to also safely and gracefully shut it down whenever OS X shuts down for whatever reason. The Mac is connected to a UPS and configured to perform an automatic shutdown in case the battery starts running low so that's no additional problem. Now the first thing I did was to go into Fusion's prefs and select "Power off the vm" when closing it. However I noticed that for some arcane reason closing the vm window would actually forcibly power off the vm: so then I found this post that showed me how to change the default power options and I managed to have the vm cleanly shutdown when closing its window or quitting Fusion altogether. At this point I was hoping to have solved the problem but as it turns out upon invoking system shutdown OS X doesn't wait for the vm to shutdown and terminates Fusion before it has a chance to do so. At this point I started looking for a way to automate the process of shutting down the guest os via some advanced setting but had no luck in doing so. That's when I found a command to shut the vm down: vmrun and it worked. The only thing left was to find out a way to execute this script on os x shutdown and giving it a little time to power off completely. However this turned out to be a nightmare: I spent hours looking through several ways to do this with Startup Items, rc.shutdown, cron, launchd, etc... but none of them worked the way I had configured them. I have to say that I found very limited information on using launchd for a shutdown script execution and I know it's the latest thing in the OS X world so I'm hoping someone out there among you will be able to help me out with this. I still think this is an extremely basic feature to ask for and I was really surprised to find this little documentation on so many different aspects of this problem. Is Fusion too basic of an application for this? I really hope someone can help. Thank you very much in advance.

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• where on disk is space allocated for new files inside LVM lv with ext4 file system?

  - by Jost

  I run a multi-disk server with LVM2. Several large disks serve as LVM2 physical volumes for one volume group, containing one logical volume formatted with ext4. Nothing fancy, just your standard linear setup. Recently an additional, very small disk was added as physical volume to that volume group and I expanded both the logical volume, and the ext4 file system therein onto that disk. This lv is used to store incremental backups using rsync and is only about 30% full, there have rarely been any files deleted from it, only incremental writes. Now this new HDD I added to the pre-existing volume group has unexpectedly died on me, and the volume group won't come up because it is missing one physical volume. As fate will have it, this WAS the "in an event of catastrophic failure on the primary server"-backup, the event happened, the boss is not happy, so this kinda has to work... According to this (Part 3): http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/19386.html it is possible to trick LVM into starting anyway by creating a new pv with identical metadata to the failed disk, which will make the volume accessible, but of course leave giant holes in the file system. I have'n tried it yet, because it involves repairing (writing to) the file system which eliminates the possibility of trying other things if it fails. Now my question is: How does this setup actually allocate disk space for new data? Is it allocated linearly from beginning to end of PVs, in the order they were added to the vg? Is it striped somehow in order to increase performance/balance load? since this defective disk was added only later to an existing lvm2 vg and lv, containing a half-empty ext4, what are the chances that there was never any data written to the defective disk? In other words: what are the chances of recovering all my data, even without the defective disk, by just starting the volume group as-is? Am I about to go spend $1500 on having 250GB of empty space recovered when I send the defective disk in for repair? Is there a way to check without mounting the file system and opening the files, hoping they contain something other than zeros? (comparing addresses of used data blocks inside ext4 to address ranges that were on the missing pv, something like that, preferably easy to automate) I know bitwise-copying the entire lv into an image file before trying to repair the ext4 would probably be a good idea, but since this lv is very large and I just suffered major file system failure on several systems it is probably a luxury I don't have... Any suggestions?

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