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• What directory are spooled print files written to in Windows XP?

  - by Software Monkey

  I just need to know where the temporary files are written to when a printer is configured to spool before printing.

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• How to print index in a 'for-loop' being executed in remote host through SSH?

  - by YShin

  I want to ssh into a remote host, and then execute a for loop that goes through sequence of numbers to control number of different nodes. ssh user@host /bin/bash << EOF for i in {1..10} do echo $i done EOF If I do this, the output is just 10 blank lines, instead of printing out numbers from 1 through 10. If I execute same code on my local machine, I get the desired output which is ten lines each line printing from 1 through 10. How would one achieve the intended functionality, that is accessing the index in a for loop that is being executed in SSH?

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• Is there a (free or commercial) print server which print PDFs from networks?

  - by Eonil

  I'm working in office which uses Windows server for printing. Because our printer supports only Windows driver. But here are Mac OS X also which requires network printing... I'm sure there is no driver of the printer for Mac. So I figured out an idea to do this. On the Mac, a virtual printer driver generates and sends PDF file to print server. Print server, prints PDF files with it's local printer. Is there a solution can do this? (free or commercial)

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• make my Ubuntu 12.04 laptop visible on the network

  - by Andrew Boyd

  I'm ecstatically happy with my 12.04 on my laptop after loading it over my MS Vista... but there's just one thing, one little fly in the ointment.... While I can view our 2 Terabyte, shared hard-drive in the lounge (and copy files back and forth) I can't see my PC (when I boot up in Ubuntu 12.04) nor the Lubuntu computer connected to the TV (for movies, Youtube etc). Printing to the HP office jet on the PC doesnt work over the network either. Have had one dubious flirtation with Samba, which seems to be the only thing I've found that will 'work', however halfway through that "installation" everything just ground to a halt, the directions began to stop making sense... I was working from this page. Our Network consists of the following: Our Internet service is wirelessly sent to us from our provider to our dish on a pole. It comes into the house via an ethernet cable. We split it there to a phone, and to 6 other destinations (bedrooms, computers, and to another splitter in the lounge which has a wifi antennae and 4 ethernet ports). one port goes to the Lubuntu OS PC which is connected to the TV the second port goes to the 2 Terabyte harddrive (MS powered 'Mybooklive') (the other two are empty) My Ubuntu 12.04 laptop connects wirelessly to this splitter in the lounge. I know just enough about computers to get myself into an awful mess without too much trouble We usually can view friends' laptops when they get on our network (as they are invariably MS OS's) Our flatmate, who introduced us to Linux's computer is also invisible How can we make our Linux OS based computers visible on the network and share files and printing?

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• Is this a dual monitor reset bug?

  - by Tentresh

  My two displays are: Intel GMA x4500 Laptop (1280x800 native resolution of the built-in display) External display (1920x1080) A few minutes after I login to my dual monitor setup, it gets reset to mirror screens. If I restore the settings via the displays application, everything is fine. On each reset, the following messages are written into /var/log/Xorg.0.log: [ 60.852] (II) PM Event received: Capability Changed [ 60.852] I830PMEvent: Capability change [ 132.920] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SEC", prod id 12869 [ 132.920] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines: [ 132.920] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x800"x0.0 68.94 1280 1296 1344 1408 800 801 804 816 -hsync -vsync (49.0 kHz) [ 134.228] (II) intel(0): Allocated new frame buffer 1280x800 stride 5120, tiled Whereas right on startup or manual resolution reset, /var/log/Xorg.0.log reports the expected frame buffer allocation: [ 1562.382] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SEC", prod id 12869 [ 1562.382] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines: [ 1562.382] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x800"x0.0 68.94 1280 1296 1344 1408 800 801 804 816 -hsync -vsync (49.0 kHz) [ 1576.740] (II) intel(0): Allocated new frame buffer 3200x1080 stride 12800, tiled Is Ubuntu 12.04 not compatible with my video card? Can this be solved within Ubuntu? I like its interface, but manually fiddling with resolution on every login is not bearable.

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• Is it necessary to add an HP printer to CUPS using the hplip URI?

  - by JPbuntu

  I recently setup a CUPS print server (Ubuntu server 12.04) and I having trouble with performance of a HP Color LaserJet Printer CP3505n. The printer pauses for about a second between printing each page, which is annoying when there is a lot of printing to be done. This doesn't happen when the printer is installed directly to a Windows client. In an attempt to fix this I have setup the printer a couple different ways. I decided not to do a Samba share since this wiki said IPP is preferred. First Method Added to HP LaserJet to CUPS as a Discovered Network Printer, and selected HP Color LaserJet cp3505 hpijs pcl3, 3.12.2 (en) driver. I did not use a hplip URI. Second Method (hplip URI) I thought adding hplip to the mix might improve the performance, so I added the printer like this: Ran hp-setup -m 192.168.2.60, prompted to select driver Selected HP Color LaserJet cp3505 hpijs pcl3, 3.12.2 (en) Used hplip to generate a URI: hp-makeuri 192.168.2.60 Then added the printer to CUPS as a Local Printer: HP Printer (HPLIP), and entered: hp:/net/HP_Color_LaserJet_CP3505?ip=192.168.2.60. Either method I use I am able to share the printer on the network by adding a printer as http://192.168.2.2:631/printers/HP_LASER-TERRAC. Does it make a difference which way the printer is added cups? If so, and I install the printer with the hp URI, can I still change the driver using the CUPS web interface? I have been trying out different drivers to try and improve performance, and the cups interface is the easiest way to change them. Thanks in advance.

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• Network print to brother MFC-7420

  - by trampster

  I am trying to pint to a Brother MFC-7420 from my ubuntu 10.04 machine. The brother is attached to a windows XP machine and is shared. This is what I have tried: System-Administration-Printing, Add, Expand Network Printer, Windows Printer via SAMBA, Browse (I can find the printer no problems here), Foward, Choose Driver Dialog, Brother, My printer is not in this list So the next thing I tried was to download the printer driver from here http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_prn.html The driver installed fine but my printer still does not appear in the list. I also tried installing the cups wrapper but that gave the following error. Restarting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd [ OK ] cp: cannot stat `/usr/share/cups/model/MFC7420.ppd': No such file or directory dpkg: error processing cupswrappermfc7420 (--install): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: cupswrappermfc7420 I tried connecting the printer directly but even though I have installed the driver, when I go to printers and click on the printer (it shows up fine as a USB printer) then it say searching for drivers and then gives me a list, this is the same list as before which doesn't have my printer. It really shouldn't be this hard. on window you don't have to installing anything it just works and the same is true for my brothers Mac. How do I print to my printer?

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• Ubuntu 12.04 dual monitor reset bug

  - by Tentresh

  My two displays are: Intel GMA x4500 Laptop (1280x800 native resolution of the built-in display) External display (1920x1080) Few minutes after I login to my dual monitor setup its get reset to mirror screens. If I restore the settings via displays application everything is fine. On each reset the following messages are written into /var/log/Xorg.0.log: [ 60.852] (II) PM Event received: Capability Changed [ 60.852] I830PMEvent: Capability change [ 132.920] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SEC", prod id 12869 [ 132.920] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines: [ 132.920] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x800"x0.0 68.94 1280 1296 1344 1408 800 801 804 816 -hsync -vsync (49.0 kHz) [ 134.228] (II) intel(0): Allocated new frame buffer 1280x800 stride 5120, tiled Whereas right on startup or manual resolution reset /var/log/Xorg.0.log reports the expected frame buffer allocation: [ 1562.382] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SEC", prod id 12869 [ 1562.382] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines: [ 1562.382] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x800"x0.0 68.94 1280 1296 1344 1408 800 801 804 816 -hsync -vsync (49.0 kHz) [ 1576.740] (II) intel(0): Allocated new frame buffer 3200x1080 stride 12800, tiled Is Ubuntu 12.04 not compatible with my video card? Can this be solved within Ubuntu? I like it's interface, but manually fiddling with resolution on every login is not bearable.

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• Merging elements inside a xml.etree.ElementTree

  - by theAlse

  I have a huge test data like the one provided below (and yes I have no control over this data). Each line is actually 6 parts and I need to generate an XML based on this data. Nav;Basic;Dest;Smoke;No;Yes; Nav;Dest;Recent;Regg;No;Yes; Nav;Dest;Favourites;Regg;No;Yes; ... Nav;Dest using on board;By POI;Smoke;No;Yes; Nav;Dest using on board;Other;Regg;No;Yes; The first 3 elements on each line denotes "test suites"-XML element and the last 3 element should create a "test case"-XML element. I have successfully converted it into a XML using the following code: # testsuite (root) testsuite = ET.Element('testsuite') testsuite.set("name", "Tests") def _create_testcase_tag(elem): global testsuite level1, level2, level3, elem4, elem5, elem6 = elem # -- testsuite (level1) testsuite_level1 = ET.SubElement(testsuite, "testsuite") testsuite_level1.set("name", level1) # -- testsuite (level2) testsuite_level2 = ET.SubElement(testsuite_level1, "testsuite") testsuite_level2.set("name", level2) # -- testsuite (level3) testsuite_level2 = ET.SubElement(testsuite_level2, "testsuite") testsuite_level2.set("name", level3) # -- testcase testcase = ET.SubElement(testsuite_level2, "testcase") testcase.set("name", "TBD") summary = ET.SubElement(testcase, "summary") summary.text = "Test Type= %s, Automated= %s, Available=%s" %(elem4, elem5, elem6) with open(input_file) as in_file: for line_number, a_line in enumerate(in_file): try: parameters = a_line.split(';') if len(parameters) >= 6: level1 = parameters[0].strip() level2 = parameters[1].strip() level3 = parameters[2].strip() elem4 = parameters[3].strip() elem5 = parameters[4].strip() elem6 = parameters[5].strip() lines_as_list.append((level1, level2, level3, elem4, elem5, elem6)) except ValueError: pass lines_as_list.sort() for elem in lines_as_list: _create_testcase_tag(elem) output_xml = ET.ElementTree(testsuite) ET.ElementTree.write(output_xml, output_file, xml_declaration=True, encoding="UTF-8") The above code generates an XML like this: <testsuite name="Tests"> <testsuite name="Nav"> <testsuite name="Basic navigation"> <testsuite name="Set destination"> <testcase name="TBD"> <summary>Test Type= Smoke test Automated= No, Available=Yes</summary> </testcase> </testsuite> </testsuite> </testsuite> <testsuite name="Nav"> <testsuite name="Set destination"> <testsuite name="Recent"> <testcase name="TBD"> <summary> Test Type= Reggression test Automated= No, Available=Yes </summary> </testcase> </testsuite> </testsuite> </testsuite> </testsuite> ... This is all correct, but as you can see I have created a whole tree for each line and that is not what I need. I need to combine e.g. all testsuite with the same name into one testsuite and also perform that recursively. So the XML looks like this instead: <testsuite name="Tests"> <testsuite name="Nav"> <testsuite name="Basic navigation"> <testsuite name="Set destination"> <testcase name="TBD"> <summary>Test Type= Smoke test Automated= No, Available=Yes</summary> </testcase> </testsuite> <testsuite name="Recent"> <testcase name="TBD"> <summary> Test Type= Reggression test Automated= No, Available=Yes </summary> </testcase> </testsuite> </testsuite> </testsuite> </testsuite> I hope you can understand what I mean, but level1, level2 and level3 should be unique with testcases inside. How should I do this? Please do not suggest the use of any external libraries! I can not install new libraries in customer site. xml.etree.ElementTree is all I have. Thanks

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• SQLite, python, unicode, and non-utf data

  - by Nathan Spears

  I started by trying to store strings in sqlite using python, and got the message: sqlite3.ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory = str). It is highly recommended that you instead just switch your application to Unicode strings. Ok, I switched to Unicode strings. Then I started getting the message: sqlite3.OperationalError: Could not decode to UTF-8 column 'tag_artist' with text 'Sigur Rós' when trying to retrieve data from the db. More research and I started encoding it in utf8, but then 'Sigur Rós' starts looking like 'Sigur Rós' note: My console was set to display in 'latin_1' as @John Machin pointed out. What gives? After reading this, describing exactly the same situation I'm in, it seems as if the advice is to ignore the other advice and use 8-bit bytestrings after all. I didn't know much about unicode and utf before I started this process. I've learned quite a bit in the last couple hours, but I'm still ignorant of whether there is a way to correctly convert 'ó' from latin-1 to utf-8 and not mangle it. If there isn't, why would sqlite 'highly recommend' I switch my application to unicode strings? I'm going to update this question with a summary and some example code of everything I've learned in the last 24 hours so that someone in my shoes can have an easy(er) guide. If the information I post is wrong or misleading in any way please tell me and I'll update, or one of you senior guys can update. Summary of answers Let me first state the goal as I understand it. The goal in processing various encodings, if you are trying to convert between them, is to understand what your source encoding is, then convert it to unicode using that source encoding, then convert it to your desired encoding. Unicode is a base and encodings are mappings of subsets of that base. utf_8 has room for every character in unicode, but because they aren't in the same place as, for instance, latin_1, a string encoded in utf_8 and sent to a latin_1 console will not look the way you expect. In python the process of getting to unicode and into another encoding looks like: str.decode('source_encoding').encode('desired_encoding') or if the str is already in unicode str.encode('desired_encoding') For sqlite I didn't actually want to encode it again, I wanted to decode it and leave it in unicode format. Here are four things you might need to be aware of as you try to work with unicode and encodings in python. The encoding of the string you want to work with, and the encoding you want to get it to. The system encoding. The console encoding. The encoding of the source file Elaboration: (1) When you read a string from a source, it must have some encoding, like latin_1 or utf_8. In my case, I'm getting strings from filenames, so unfortunately, I could be getting any kind of encoding. Windows XP uses UCS-2 (a Unicode system) as its native string type, which seems like cheating to me. Fortunately for me, the characters in most filenames are not going to be made up of more than one source encoding type, and I think all of mine were either completely latin_1, completely utf_8, or just plain ascii (which is a subset of both of those). So I just read them and decoded them as if they were still in latin_1 or utf_8. It's possible, though, that you could have latin_1 and utf_8 and whatever other characters mixed together in a filename on Windows. Sometimes those characters can show up as boxes, other times they just look mangled, and other times they look correct (accented characters and whatnot). Moving on. (2) Python has a default system encoding that gets set when python starts and can't be changed during runtime. See here for details. Dirty summary ... well here's the file I added: \# sitecustomize.py \# this file can be anywhere in your Python path, \# but it usually goes in ${pythondir}/lib/site-packages/ import sys sys.setdefaultencoding('utf_8') This system encoding is the one that gets used when you use the unicode("str") function without any other encoding parameters. To say that another way, python tries to decode "str" to unicode based on the default system encoding. (3) If you're using IDLE or the command-line python, I think that your console will display according to the default system encoding. I am using pydev with eclipse for some reason, so I had to go into my project settings, edit the launch configuration properties of my test script, go to the Common tab, and change the console from latin-1 to utf-8 so that I could visually confirm what I was doing was working. (4) If you want to have some test strings, eg test_str = "ó" in your source code, then you will have to tell python what kind of encoding you are using in that file. (FYI: when I mistyped an encoding I had to ctrl-Z because my file became unreadable.) This is easily accomplished by putting a line like so at the top of your source code file: # -*- coding: utf_8 -*- If you don't have this information, python attempts to parse your code as ascii by default, and so: SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xf3' in file _redacted_ on line 81, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details Once your program is working correctly, or, if you aren't using python's console or any other console to look at output, then you will probably really only care about #1 on the list. System default and console encoding are not that important unless you need to look at output and/or you are using the builtin unicode() function (without any encoding parameters) instead of the string.decode() function. I wrote a demo function I will paste into the bottom of this gigantic mess that I hope correctly demonstrates the items in my list. Here is some of the output when I run the character 'ó' through the demo function, showing how various methods react to the character as input. My system encoding and console output are both set to utf_8 for this run: '?' = original char <type 'str'> repr(char)='\xf3' '?' = unicode(char) ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data 'ó' = char.decode('latin_1') <type 'unicode'> repr(char.decode('latin_1'))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data Now I will change the system and console encoding to latin_1, and I get this output for the same input: 'ó' = original char <type 'str'> repr(char)='\xf3' 'ó' = unicode(char) <type 'unicode'> repr(unicode(char))=u'\xf3' 'ó' = char.decode('latin_1') <type 'unicode'> repr(char.decode('latin_1'))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data Notice that the 'original' character displays correctly and the builtin unicode() function works now. Now I change my console output back to utf_8. '?' = original char <type 'str'> repr(char)='\xf3' '?' = unicode(char) <type 'unicode'> repr(unicode(char))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('latin_1') <type 'unicode'> repr(char.decode('latin_1'))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data Here everything still works the same as last time but the console can't display the output correctly. Etc. The function below also displays more information that this and hopefully would help someone figure out where the gap in their understanding is. I know all this information is in other places and more thoroughly dealt with there, but I hope that this would be a good kickoff point for someone trying to get coding with python and/or sqlite. Ideas are great but sometimes source code can save you a day or two of trying to figure out what functions do what. Disclaimers: I'm no encoding expert, I put this together to help my own understanding. I kept building on it when I should have probably started passing functions as arguments to avoid so much redundant code, so if I can I'll make it more concise. Also, utf_8 and latin_1 are by no means the only encoding schemes, they are just the two I was playing around with because I think they handle everything I need. Add your own encoding schemes to the demo function and test your own input. One more thing: there are apparently crazy application developers making life difficult in Windows. #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: utf_8 -*- import os import sys def encodingDemo(str): validStrings = () try: print "str =",str,"{0} repr(str) = {1}".format(type(str), repr(str)) validStrings += ((str,""),) except UnicodeEncodeError as ude: print "Couldn't print the str itself because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t", print ude try: x = unicode(str) print "unicode(str) = ",x validStrings+= ((x, " decoded into unicode by the default system encoding"),) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "ERROR. unicode(str) couldn't decode the string because the system encoding is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string." print "\tThe system encoding is set to {0}. See error:\n\t".format(sys.getdefaultencoding()), print ude except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "ERROR. Couldn't print the unicode(str) because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t", print uee try: x = str.decode('latin_1') print "str.decode('latin_1') =",x validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with latin_1 into unicode"),) try: print "str.decode('latin_1').encode('utf_8') =",str.decode('latin_1').encode('utf_8') validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with latin_1 into unicode and encoded into utf_8"),) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "The string was decoded into unicode using the latin_1 encoding, but couldn't be encoded into utf_8. See error:\n\t", print ude except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "Something didn't work, probably because the string wasn't latin_1 encoded. See error:\n\t", print ude except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "ERROR. Couldn't print the str.decode('latin_1') because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t", print uee try: x = str.decode('utf_8') print "str.decode('utf_8') =",x validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with utf_8 into unicode"),) try: print "str.decode('utf_8').encode('latin_1') =",str.decode('utf_8').encode('latin_1') except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "str.decode('utf_8').encode('latin_1') didn't work. The string was decoded into unicode using the utf_8 encoding, but couldn't be encoded into latin_1. See error:\n\t", validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with utf_8 into unicode and encoded into latin_1"),) print ude except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "str.decode('utf_8') didn't work, probably because the string wasn't utf_8 encoded. See error:\n\t", print ude except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "ERROR. Couldn't print the str.decode('utf_8') because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t",uee print print "Printing information about each character in the original string." for char in str: try: print "\t'" + char + "' = original char {0} repr(char)={1}".format(type(char), repr(char)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = original char {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(char), repr(char), ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = original char {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(char), repr(char), uee) print uee try: x = unicode(char) print "\t'" + x + "' = unicode(char) {1} repr(unicode(char))={2}".format(x, type(x), repr(x)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = unicode(char) ERROR: {0}".format(ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = unicode(char) {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(x), repr(x), uee) try: x = char.decode('latin_1') print "\t'" + x + "' = char.decode('latin_1') {1} repr(char.decode('latin_1'))={2}".format(x, type(x), repr(x)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = char.decode('latin_1') ERROR: {0}".format(ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = char.decode('latin_1') {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(x), repr(x), uee) try: x = char.decode('utf_8') print "\t'" + x + "' = char.decode('utf_8') {1} repr(char.decode('utf_8'))={2}".format(x, type(x), repr(x)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: {0}".format(ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = char.decode('utf_8') {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(x), repr(x), uee) print x = 'ó' encodingDemo(x) Much thanks for the answers below and especially to @John Machin for answering so thoroughly.

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• SQLite, python, unicode, and non-utf data

  - by Nathan Spears

  I started by trying to store strings in sqlite using python, and got the message: sqlite3.ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory = str). It is highly recommended that you instead just switch your application to Unicode strings. Ok, I switched to Unicode strings. Then I started getting the message: sqlite3.OperationalError: Could not decode to UTF-8 column 'tag_artist' with text 'Sigur Rós' when trying to retrieve data from the db. More research and I started encoding it in utf8, but then 'Sigur Rós' starts looking like 'Sigur Rós' note: My console was set to display in 'latin_1' as @John Machin pointed out. What gives? After reading this, describing exactly the same situation I'm in, it seems as if the advice is to ignore the other advice and use 8-bit bytestrings after all. I didn't know much about unicode and utf before I started this process. I've learned quite a bit in the last couple hours, but I'm still ignorant of whether there is a way to correctly convert 'ó' from latin-1 to utf-8 and not mangle it. If there isn't, why would sqlite 'highly recommend' I switch my application to unicode strings? I'm going to update this question with a summary and some example code of everything I've learned in the last 24 hours so that someone in my shoes can have an easy(er) guide. If the information I post is wrong or misleading in any way please tell me and I'll update, or one of you senior guys can update. Summary of answers Let me first state the goal as I understand it. The goal in processing various encodings, if you are trying to convert between them, is to understand what your source encoding is, then convert it to unicode using that source encoding, then convert it to your desired encoding. Unicode is a base and encodings are mappings of subsets of that base. utf_8 has room for every character in unicode, but because they aren't in the same place as, for instance, latin_1, a string encoded in utf_8 and sent to a latin_1 console will not look the way you expect. In python the process of getting to unicode and into another encoding looks like: str.decode('source_encoding').encode('desired_encoding') or if the str is already in unicode str.encode('desired_encoding') For sqlite I didn't actually want to encode it again, I wanted to decode it and leave it in unicode format. Here are four things you might need to be aware of as you try to work with unicode and encodings in python. The encoding of the string you want to work with, and the encoding you want to get it to. The system encoding. The console encoding. The encoding of the source file Elaboration: (1) When you read a string from a source, it must have some encoding, like latin_1 or utf_8. In my case, I'm getting strings from filenames, so unfortunately, I could be getting any kind of encoding. Windows XP uses UCS-2 (a Unicode system) as its native string type, which seems like cheating to me. Fortunately for me, the characters in most filenames are not going to be made up of more than one source encoding type, and I think all of mine were either completely latin_1, completely utf_8, or just plain ascii (which is a subset of both of those). So I just read them and decoded them as if they were still in latin_1 or utf_8. It's possible, though, that you could have latin_1 and utf_8 and whatever other characters mixed together in a filename on Windows. Sometimes those characters can show up as boxes, other times they just look mangled, and other times they look correct (accented characters and whatnot). Moving on. (2) Python has a default system encoding that gets set when python starts and can't be changed during runtime. See here for details. Dirty summary ... well here's the file I added: \# sitecustomize.py \# this file can be anywhere in your Python path, \# but it usually goes in ${pythondir}/lib/site-packages/ import sys sys.setdefaultencoding('utf_8') This system encoding is the one that gets used when you use the unicode("str") function without any other encoding parameters. To say that another way, python tries to decode "str" to unicode based on the default system encoding. (3) If you're using IDLE or the command-line python, I think that your console will display according to the default system encoding. I am using pydev with eclipse for some reason, so I had to go into my project settings, edit the launch configuration properties of my test script, go to the Common tab, and change the console from latin-1 to utf-8 so that I could visually confirm what I was doing was working. (4) If you want to have some test strings, eg test_str = "ó" in your source code, then you will have to tell python what kind of encoding you are using in that file. (FYI: when I mistyped an encoding I had to ctrl-Z because my file became unreadable.) This is easily accomplished by putting a line like so at the top of your source code file: # -*- coding: utf_8 -*- If you don't have this information, python attempts to parse your code as ascii by default, and so: SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xf3' in file _redacted_ on line 81, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details Once your program is working correctly, or, if you aren't using python's console or any other console to look at output, then you will probably really only care about #1 on the list. System default and console encoding are not that important unless you need to look at output and/or you are using the builtin unicode() function (without any encoding parameters) instead of the string.decode() function. I wrote a demo function I will paste into the bottom of this gigantic mess that I hope correctly demonstrates the items in my list. Here is some of the output when I run the character 'ó' through the demo function, showing how various methods react to the character as input. My system encoding and console output are both set to utf_8 for this run: '?' = original char <type 'str'> repr(char)='\xf3' '?' = unicode(char) ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data 'ó' = char.decode('latin_1') <type 'unicode'> repr(char.decode('latin_1'))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data Now I will change the system and console encoding to latin_1, and I get this output for the same input: 'ó' = original char <type 'str'> repr(char)='\xf3' 'ó' = unicode(char) <type 'unicode'> repr(unicode(char))=u'\xf3' 'ó' = char.decode('latin_1') <type 'unicode'> repr(char.decode('latin_1'))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data Notice that the 'original' character displays correctly and the builtin unicode() function works now. Now I change my console output back to utf_8. '?' = original char <type 'str'> repr(char)='\xf3' '?' = unicode(char) <type 'unicode'> repr(unicode(char))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('latin_1') <type 'unicode'> repr(char.decode('latin_1'))=u'\xf3' '?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xf3 in position 0: unexpected end of data Here everything still works the same as last time but the console can't display the output correctly. Etc. The function below also displays more information that this and hopefully would help someone figure out where the gap in their understanding is. I know all this information is in other places and more thoroughly dealt with there, but I hope that this would be a good kickoff point for someone trying to get coding with python and/or sqlite. Ideas are great but sometimes source code can save you a day or two of trying to figure out what functions do what. Disclaimers: I'm no encoding expert, I put this together to help my own understanding. I kept building on it when I should have probably started passing functions as arguments to avoid so much redundant code, so if I can I'll make it more concise. Also, utf_8 and latin_1 are by no means the only encoding schemes, they are just the two I was playing around with because I think they handle everything I need. Add your own encoding schemes to the demo function and test your own input. One more thing: there are apparently crazy application developers making life difficult in Windows. #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: utf_8 -*- import os import sys def encodingDemo(str): validStrings = () try: print "str =",str,"{0} repr(str) = {1}".format(type(str), repr(str)) validStrings += ((str,""),) except UnicodeEncodeError as ude: print "Couldn't print the str itself because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t", print ude try: x = unicode(str) print "unicode(str) = ",x validStrings+= ((x, " decoded into unicode by the default system encoding"),) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "ERROR. unicode(str) couldn't decode the string because the system encoding is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string." print "\tThe system encoding is set to {0}. See error:\n\t".format(sys.getdefaultencoding()), print ude except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "ERROR. Couldn't print the unicode(str) because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t", print uee try: x = str.decode('latin_1') print "str.decode('latin_1') =",x validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with latin_1 into unicode"),) try: print "str.decode('latin_1').encode('utf_8') =",str.decode('latin_1').encode('utf_8') validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with latin_1 into unicode and encoded into utf_8"),) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "The string was decoded into unicode using the latin_1 encoding, but couldn't be encoded into utf_8. See error:\n\t", print ude except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "Something didn't work, probably because the string wasn't latin_1 encoded. See error:\n\t", print ude except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "ERROR. Couldn't print the str.decode('latin_1') because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t", print uee try: x = str.decode('utf_8') print "str.decode('utf_8') =",x validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with utf_8 into unicode"),) try: print "str.decode('utf_8').encode('latin_1') =",str.decode('utf_8').encode('latin_1') except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "str.decode('utf_8').encode('latin_1') didn't work. The string was decoded into unicode using the utf_8 encoding, but couldn't be encoded into latin_1. See error:\n\t", validStrings+= ((x, " decoded with utf_8 into unicode and encoded into latin_1"),) print ude except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "str.decode('utf_8') didn't work, probably because the string wasn't utf_8 encoded. See error:\n\t", print ude except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "ERROR. Couldn't print the str.decode('utf_8') because the console is set to an encoding that doesn't understand some character in the string. See error:\n\t",uee print print "Printing information about each character in the original string." for char in str: try: print "\t'" + char + "' = original char {0} repr(char)={1}".format(type(char), repr(char)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = original char {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(char), repr(char), ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = original char {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(char), repr(char), uee) print uee try: x = unicode(char) print "\t'" + x + "' = unicode(char) {1} repr(unicode(char))={2}".format(x, type(x), repr(x)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = unicode(char) ERROR: {0}".format(ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = unicode(char) {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(x), repr(x), uee) try: x = char.decode('latin_1') print "\t'" + x + "' = char.decode('latin_1') {1} repr(char.decode('latin_1'))={2}".format(x, type(x), repr(x)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = char.decode('latin_1') ERROR: {0}".format(ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = char.decode('latin_1') {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(x), repr(x), uee) try: x = char.decode('utf_8') print "\t'" + x + "' = char.decode('utf_8') {1} repr(char.decode('utf_8'))={2}".format(x, type(x), repr(x)) except UnicodeDecodeError as ude: print "\t'?' = char.decode('utf_8') ERROR: {0}".format(ude) except UnicodeEncodeError as uee: print "\t'?' = char.decode('utf_8') {0} repr(char)={1} ERROR PRINTING: {2}".format(type(x), repr(x), uee) print x = 'ó' encodingDemo(x) Much thanks for the answers below and especially to @John Machin for answering so thoroughly.

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• Automating XNA Performance Testing?

  - by Grofit

  I was wondering what peoples approaches or thoughts were on automating performance testing in XNA. Currently I am looking at only working in 2d, but that poses many areas where performance can be improved with different implementations. An example would be if you had 2 different implementations of spatial partitioning, one may be faster than another but without doing some actual performance testing you wouldn't be able to tell which one for sure (unless you saw the code was blatantly slow in certain parts). You could write a unit test which for a given time frame kept adding/updating/removing entities for both implementations and see how many were made in each timeframe and the higher one would be the faster one (in this given example). Another higher level example would be if you wanted to see how many entities you can have on the screen roughly without going beneath 60fps. The problem with this is to automate it you would need to use the hidden form trick or some other thing to kick off a mock game and purely test which parts you care about and disable everything else. I know that this isnt a simple affair really as even if you can automate the tests, really it is up to a human to interpret if the results are performant enough, but as part of a build step you could have it run these tests and publish the results somewhere for comparison. This way if you go from version 1.1 to 1.2 but have changed a few underlying algorithms you may notice that generally the performance score would have gone up, meaning you have improved your overall performance of the application, and then from 1.2 to 1.3 you may notice that you have then dropped overall performance a bit. So has anyone automated this sort of thing in their projects, and if so how do you measure your performance comparisons at a high level and what frameworks do you use to test? As providing you have written your code so its testable/mockable for most parts you can just use your tests as a mechanism for getting some performance results... === Edit === Just for clarity, I am more interested in the best way to make use of automated tests within XNA to track your performance, not play testing or guessing by manually running your game on a machine. This is completely different to seeing if your game is playable on X hardware, it is more about tracking the change in performance as your game engine/framework changes. As mentioned in one of the comments you could easily test "how many nodes can I insert/remove/update within QuadTreeA within 2 seconds", but you have to physically look at these results every time to see if it has changed, which may be fine and is still better than just relying on playing it to see if you notice any difference between version. However if you were to put an Assert in to notify you of a fail if it goes lower than lets say 5000 in 2 seconds you have a brittle test as it is then contextual to the hardware, not just the implementation. Although that being said these sort of automated tests are only really any use if you are running your tests as some sort of build pipeline i.e: Checkout - Run Unit Tests - Run Integration Tests - Run Performance Tests - Package So then you can easily compare the stats from one build to another on the CI server as a report of some sort, and again this may not mean much to anyone if you are not used to Continuous Integration. The main crux of this question is to see how people manage this between builds and how they find it best to report upon. As I said it can be subjective but as knowledge will be gained from the answers it seems a worthwhile question.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: Agility

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Agility in this context is defined as the ability to quickly develop and deploy an application. In theory, the speed at which your organization can develop and deploy an application on available hardware is identical to what you could deploy in a distributed environment. But in practice, this is not always the case. Having an option to use a distributed environment can be much faster for the deployment and even the development process. Implementation: When an organization designs code, they are essentially becoming a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to their own organization. To do that, the IT operations team becomes the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to the development teams. From there, the software is developed and deployed using an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. A simplified view of an ALM process is as follows: Requirements Analysis Design and Development Implementation Testing Deployment to Production Maintenance In an on-premise environment, this often equates to the following process map: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including physical plant, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to on-premise Testing servers. If no server capacity available, more resources procured through standard budgeting and ordering processes. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Server team involved to select platform and environments with available capacity. If no server capacity available, standard budgeting and procurement process followed. If no server capacity available, systems built, configured and put under standard organizational IT control. Systems configured for proper operating systems, patches, security and virus scans. System maintenance, HA/DR, backups and recovery plans configured and put into place. Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. In a distributed computing environment like Windows Azure, the process maps a bit differently: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including budget, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to Azure. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Code deployed to Azure. Point in time backup and recovery plans configured and put into place.(HA/DR and automated backups already present in Azure fabric) Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. This means that several steps can be removed or expedited. It also means that the business function requesting the application can be held directly responsible for the funding of that request, speeding the process further since the IT budgeting process may not be involved in the Azure scenario. An additional benefit is the “Azure Marketplace”, In effect this becomes an app store for Enterprises to select pre-defined code and data applications to mesh or bolt-in to their current code, possibly saving development time. Resources: Whitepaper download- What is ALM?  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743693  Whitepaper download - ALM and Business Strategy: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743690  LiveMeeting Recording on ALM and Windows Azure (registration required, but free): http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/visualstudio/contact-us.aspx?sbj=Developing with Windows Azure (ALM perspective) - 10:00-11:00 - 19th Jan 2011

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• CI tests to enforce specific development rules - good practice?

  - by KeithS

  The following is all purely hypothetical and any particular portion of it may or may not accurately describe real persons or situations, whether living, dead or just pretending. Let's say I'm a senior dev or architect in charge of a dev team working on a project. This project includes a security library for user authentication/authorization of the application under development. The library must be available for developers to edit; however, I wish to "trust but verify" that coders are not doing things that could compromise the security of the finished system, and because this isn't my only responsibility I want it to be done in an automated way. As one example, let's say I have an interface that represents a user which has been authenticated by the system's security library. The interface exposes basic user info and a list of things the user is authorized to do (so that the client app doesn't have to keep asking the server "can I do this?"), all in an immutable fashion of course. There is only one implementation of this interface in production code, and for the purposes of this post we can say that all appropriate measures have been taken to ensure that this implementation can only be used by the one part of our code that needs to be able to create concretions of the interface. The coders have been instructed that this interface and its implementation are sacrosanct and any changes must go through me. However, those are just words; the security library's source is open for editing by necessity. Any of my devs could decide that this secured, private, hash-checked implementation needs to be public so that they could do X, or alternately they could create their own implementation of this public interface in a different library, exposing the hashing algorithm that provides the secure checksum, in order to do Y. I may not be made aware of these changes so that I can beat the developer over the head for it. An attacker could then find these little nuggets in an unobfuscated library of the compiled product, and exploit it to provide fake users and/or falsely-elevated administrative permissions, bypassing the entire security system. This possibility keeps me awake for a couple of nights, and then I create an automated test that reflectively checks the codebase for types deriving from the interface, and fails if it finds any that are not exactly what and where I expect them to be. I compile this test into a project under a separate folder of the VCS that only I have rights to commit to, have CI compile it as an external library of the main project, and set it up to run as part of the CI test suite for user commits. Now, I have an automated test under my complete control that will tell me (and everyone else) if the number of implementations increases without my involvement, or an implementation that I did know about has anything new added or has its modifiers or those of its members changed. I can then investigate further, and regain the opportunity to beat developers over the head as necessary. Is this considered "reasonable" to want to do in situations like this? Am I going to be seen in a negative light for going behind my devs' backs to ensure they aren't doing something they shouldn't?

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• Run-time error'9' subscript out of range

  - by Chris

  The error occurs when I rename the file. I need to be able to the macro automatically recognise the change in the file name and apply it to the macro. Is there any way to do this without having to manually change it each time which will no work for what I need this to do Sub OccurenceSort() ' ' OccurenceSort Macro ' Macro recorded 4/9/2010 by Chris Greenlee ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+o ' Sheets("Occurences").Select Range("A1:D58").Select Range("D58").Activate Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("B2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom Sheets("Chart").Select ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("Chart 1").Activate ActiveChart.PlotArea.Select ActiveChart.ChartArea.Select ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Values = "=Occurences!R2C2:R12C2" End Sub Sub OccurenceByValue() ' ' OccurenceByValue Macro ' Macro recorded 4/9/2010 by Chris Greenlee ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+v ' ActiveWindow.Visible = False Windows("QA Project - Automated Charts v1.1.xls").Activate Sheets("Occurences").Select Range("A1:D58").Select Range("D58").Activate Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("C2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom Sheets("Chart").Select ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("Chart 1").Activate ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Values = "=Occurences!R2C3:R12C3" End Sub Sub OccurencesByPercentIncreaseToScore() ' ' OccurencesByPercentIncreaseToScore Macro ' Macro recorded 4/9/2010 by Chris Greenlee ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+p ' ActiveWindow.Visible = False Windows("QA Project - Automated Charts v1.1.xls").Activate Sheets("Occurences").Select Range("A1:D58").Select Range("D58").Activate Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("D2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom Sheets("Chart").Select ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("Chart 1").Activate ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Values = "=Occurences!R2C4:R12C4" End Sub The problem occurs with this line Windows("QA Project - Automated Charts v1.1.xls").Activate

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• Architecture Guidance Needed?

  - by vijay

  We are about to automate number of process for our reporting team. (The reports are like daily reports, weekly reports, monthly reports, etc..) Mostly the process is like pulling some data from the oracle and then fill them in particular excel template files. Each reports and so their templates are different from each other. Except the excel file manipulation, there are hardly any business logic behind these. Client wanted an integrated tool and all the automated processes are placed as menus/submenus. Right now roughly there are around 30 process waiting to be automated. And we are expecting more new reports in the next quarter. I am nowhere to near having any practical experience when comes to architecuring. Already i have been maintaining two or three systems(they are more than 4yrs old.) for this prestegious client.The possiblity of the above mentioned tool will be manintained for another 3 yrs is very likely. From my past experience i've been through the pain of implmenting change requests to the rigd & undocumented code base resulting in the break down of the system and then eventually myself. So My main and top most concern is the maintainablity. When i was searching for these i came across this link, Smart Clients Using CAB and SCSF is the above link appropriate for my requirement? Also Should i place each automated processes in separate forms under a single project, or place them in separate projects under a single solution.. Please correct me if have missed any other important information. Thx.

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• Red Gate Coder interviews: Robin Hellen

  - by Michael Williamson

  Robin Hellen is a test engineer here at Red Gate, and is also the latest coder I’ve interviewed. We chatted about debugging code, the roles of software engineers and testers, and why Vala is currently his favourite programming language. How did you get started with programming?It started when I was about six. My dad’s a professional programmer, and he gave me and my sister one of his old computers and taught us a bit about programming. It was an old Amiga 500 with a variant of BASIC. I don’t think I ever successfully completed anything! It was just faffing around. I didn’t really get anywhere with it.But then presumably you did get somewhere with it at some point.At some point. The PC emerged as the dominant platform, and I learnt a bit of Visual Basic. I didn’t really do much, just a couple of quick hacky things. A bit of demo animation. Took me a long time to get anywhere with programming, really.When did you feel like you did start to get somewhere?I think it was when I started doing things for someone else, which was my sister’s final year of university project. She called up my dad two days before she was due to submit, saying “We need something to display a graph!”. Dad says, “I’m too busy, go talk to your brother”. So I hacked up this ugly piece of code, sent it off and they won a prize for that project. Apparently, the graph, the bit that I wrote, was the reason they won a prize! That was when I first felt that I’d actually done something that was worthwhile. That was my first real bit of code, and the ugliest code I’ve ever written. It’s basically an array of pre-drawn line elements that I shifted round the screen to draw a very spikey graph.When did you decide that programming might actually be something that you wanted to do as a career?It’s not really a decision I took, I always wanted to do something with computers. And I had to take a gap year for uni, so I was looking for twelve month internships. I applied to Red Gate, and they gave me a job as a tester. And that’s where I really started having to write code well. To a better standard that I had been up to that point.How did you find coming to Red Gate and working with other coders?I thought it was really nice. I learnt so much just from other people around. I think one of the things that’s really great is that people are just willing to help you learn. Instead of “Don’t you know that, you’re so stupid”, it’s “You can just do it this way”.If you could go back to the very start of that internship, is there something that you would tell yourself?Write shorter code. I have a tendency to write massive, many-thousand line files that I break out of right at the end. And then half-way through a project I’m doing something, I think “Where did I write that bit that does that thing?”, and it’s almost impossible to find. I wrote some horrendous code when I started. Just that principle, just keep things short. Even if looks a bit crazy to be jumping around all over the place all of the time, it’s actually a lot more understandable.And how do you hold yourself to that?Generally, if a function’s going off my screen, it’s probably too long. That’s what I tell myself, and within the team here we have code reviews, so the guys I’m with at the moment are pretty good at pulling me up on, “Doesn’t that look like it’s getting a bit long?”. It’s more just the subjective standard of readability than anything.So you’re an advocate of code review?Yes, definitely. Both to spot errors that you might have made, and to improve your knowledge. The person you’re reviewing will say “Oh, you could have done it that way”. That’s how we learn, by talking to others, and also just sharing knowledge of how your project works around the team, or even outside the team. Definitely a very firm advocate of code reviews.Do you think there’s more we could do with them?I don’t know. We’re struggling with how to add them as part of the process without it becoming too cumbersome. We’ve experimented with a few different ways, and we’ve not found anything that just works.To get more into the nitty gritty: how do you like to debug code?The first thing is to do it in my head. I’ll actually think what piece of code is likely to have caused that error, and take a quick look at it, just to see if there’s anything glaringly obvious there. The next thing I’ll probably do is throw in print statements, or throw some exceptions from various points, just to check: is it going through the code path I expect it to? A last resort is to actually debug code using a debugger.Why is the debugger the last resort?Probably because of the environments I learnt programming in. VB and early BASIC didn’t have much of a debugger, the only way to find out what your program was doing was to add print statements. Also, because a lot of the stuff I tend to work with is non-interactive, if it’s something that takes a long time to run, I can throw in the print statements, set a run off, go and do something else, and look at it again later, rather than trying to remember what happened at that point when I was debugging through it. So it also gives me the record of what happens. I hate just sitting there pressing F5, F5, continually. If you’re having to find out what your code is doing at each line, you’ve probably got a very wrong mental model of what your code’s doing, and you can find that out just as easily by inspecting a couple of values through the print statements.If I were on some codebase that you were also working on, what should I do to make it as easy as possible to understand?I’d say short and well-named methods. The one thing I like to do when I’m looking at code is to find out where a value comes from, and the more layers of indirection there are, particularly DI [dependency injection] frameworks, the harder it is to find out where something’s come from. I really hate that. I want to know if the value come from the user here or is a constant here, and if I can’t find that out, that makes code very hard to understand for me.As a tester, where do you think the split should lie between software engineers and testers?I think the split is less on areas of the code you write and more what you’re designing and creating. The developers put a structure on the code, while my major role is to say which tests we should have, whether we should test that, or it’s not worth testing that because it’s a tiny function in code that nobody’s ever actually going to see. So it’s not a split in the code, it’s a split in what you’re thinking about. Saying what code we should write, but alternatively what code we should take out.In your experience, do the software engineers tend to do much testing themselves?They tend to control the lowest layer of tests. And, depending on how the balance of people is in the team, they might write some of the higher levels of test. Or that might go to the testers. I’m the only tester on my team with three other developers, so they’ll be writing quite a lot of the actual test code, with input from me as to whether we should test that functionality, whereas on other teams, where it’s been more equal numbers, the testers have written pretty much all of the high level tests, just because that’s the best use of resource.If you could shuffle resources around however you liked, do you think that the developers should be writing those high-level tests?I think they should be writing them occasionally. It helps when they have an understanding of how testing code works and possibly what assumptions we’ve made in tests, and they can say “actually, it doesn’t work like that under the hood so you’ve missed this whole area”. It’s one of those agile things that everyone on the team should be at least comfortable doing the various jobs. So if the developers can write test code then I think that’s a very good thing.So you think testers should be able to write production code?Yes, although given most testers skills at coding, I wouldn’t advise it too much! I have written a few things, and I did make a few changes that have actually gone into our production code base. They’re not necessarily running every time but they are there. I think having that mix of skill sets is really useful. In some ways we’re using our own product to test itself, so being able to make those changes where it’s not working saves me a round-trip through the developers. It can be really annoying if the developers have no time to make a change, and I can’t touch the code.If the software engineers are consistently writing tests at all levels, what role do you think the role of a tester is?I think on a team like that, those distinctions aren’t quite so useful. There’ll be two cases. There’s either the case where the developers think they’ve written good tests, but you still need someone with a test engineer mind-set to go through the tests and validate that it’s a useful set, or the correct set for that code. Or they won’t actually be pure developers, they’ll have that mix of test ability in there.I think having slightly more distinct roles is useful. When it starts to blur, then you lose that view of the tests as a whole. The tester job is not to create tests, it’s to validate the quality of the product, and you don’t do that just by writing tests. There’s more things you’ve got to keep in your mind. And I think when you blur the roles, you start to lose that end of the tester.So because you’re working on those features, you lose that holistic view of the whole system?Yeah, and anyone who’s worked on the feature shouldn’t be testing it. You always need to have it tested it by someone who didn’t write it. Otherwise you’re a bit too close and you assume “yes, people will only use it that way”, but the tester will come along and go “how do people use this? How would our most idiotic user use this?”. I might not test that because it might be completely irrelevant. But it’s coming in and trying to have a different set of assumptions.Are you a believer that it should all be automated if possible?Not entirely. So an automated test is always better than a manual test for the long-term, but there’s still nothing that beats a human sitting in front of the application and thinking “What could I do at this point?”. The automated test is very good but they follow that strict path, and they never check anything off the path. The human tester will look at things that they weren’t expecting, whereas the automated test can only ever go “Is that value correct?” in many respects, and it won’t notice that on the other side of the screen you’re showing something completely wrong. And that value might have been checked independently, but you always find a few odd interactions when you’re going through something manually, and you always need to go through something manually to start with anyway, otherwise you won’t know where the important bits to write your automation are.When you’re doing that manual testing, do you think it’s important to do that across the entire product, or just the bits that you’ve touched recently?I think it’s important to do it mostly on the bits you’ve touched, but you can’t ignore the rest of the product. Unless you’re dealing with a very, very self-contained bit, you’re almost always encounter other bits of the product along the way. Most testers I know, even if they are looking at just one path, they’ll keep open and move around a bit anyway, just because they want to find something that’s broken. If we find that your path is right, we’ll go out and hunt something else.How do you think this fits into the idea of continuously deploying, so long as the tests pass?With deploying a website it’s a bit different because you can always pull it back. If you’re deploying an application to customers, when you’ve released it, it’s out there, you can’t pull it back. Someone’s going to keep it, no matter how hard you try there will be a few installations that stay around. So I’d always have at least a human element on that path. With websites, you could probably automate straight out, or at least straight out to an internal environment or a single server in a cloud of fifty that will serve some people. But I don’t think you should release to everyone just on automated tests passing.You’ve already mentioned using BASIC and C# — are there any other languages that you’ve used?I’ve used a few. That’s something that has changed more recently, I’ve become familiar with more languages. Before I started at Red Gate I learnt a bit of C. Then last year, I taught myself Python which I actually really enjoyed using. I’ve also come across another language called Vala, which is sort of a C#-like language. It’s basically a pre-processor for C, but it has very nice syntax. I think that’s currently my favourite language.Any particular reason for trying Vala?I have a completely Linux environment at home, and I’ve been looking for a nice language, and C# just doesn’t cut it because I won’t touch Mono. So, I was looking for something like C# but that was useable in an open source environment, and Vala’s what I found. C#’s got a few features that Vala doesn’t, and Vala’s got a few features where I think “It would be awesome if C# had that”.What are some of the features that it’s missing?Extension methods. And I think that’s the only one that really bugs me. I like to use them when I’m writing C# because it makes some things really easy, especially with libraries that you can’t touch the internals of. It doesn’t have method overloading, which is sometimes annoying.Where it does win over C#?Everything is non-nullable by default, you never have to check that something’s unexpectedly null.Also, Vala has code contracts. This is starting to come in C# 4, but the way it works in Vala is that you specify requirements in short phrases as part of your function signature and they stick to the signature, so that when you inherit it, it has exactly the same code contract as the base one, or when you inherit from an interface, you have to match the signature exactly. Just using those makes you think a bit more about how you’re writing your method, it’s not an afterthought when you’ve got contracts from base classes given to you, you can’t change it. Which I think is a lot nicer than the way C# handles it. When are those actually checked?They’re checked both at compile and run-time. The compile-time checking isn’t very strong yet, it’s quite a new feature in the compiler, and because it compiles down to C, you can write C code and interface with your methods, so you can bypass that compile-time check anyway. So there’s an extra runtime check, and if you violate one of the contracts at runtime, it’s game over for your program, there’s no exception to catch, it’s just goodbye!One thing I dislike about C# is the exceptions. You write a bit of code and fifty exceptions could come from any point in your ten lines, and you can’t mentally model how those exceptions are going to come out, and you can’t even predict them based on the functions you’re calling, because if you’ve accidentally got a derived class there instead of a base class, that can throw a completely different set of exceptions. So I’ve got no way of mentally modelling those, whereas in Vala they’re checked like Java, so you know only these exceptions can come out. You know in advance the error conditions.I think Raymond Chen on Old New Thing says “the only thing you know when you throw an exception is that you’re in an invalid state somewhere in your program, so just kill it and be done with it!”You said you’ve also learnt bits of Python. How did you find that compared to Vala and C#?Very different because of the dynamic typing. I’ve been writing a website for my own use. I’m quite into photography, so I take photos off my camera, post-process them, dump them in a file, and I get a webpage with all my thumbnails. So sort of like Picassa, but written by myself because I wanted something to learn Python with. There are some things that are really nice, I just found it really difficult to cope with the fact that I’m not quite sure what this object type that I’m passed is, I might not ever be sure, so it can randomly blow up on me. But once I train myself to ignore that and just say “well, I’m fairly sure it’s going to be something that looks like this, so I’ll use it like this”, then it’s quite nice.Any particular features that you’ve appreciated?I don’t like any particular feature, it’s just very straightforward to work with. It’s very quick to write something in, particularly as you don’t have to worry that you’ve changed something that affects a different part of the program. If you have, then that part blows up, but I can get this part working right now.If you were doing a big project, would you be willing to do it in Python rather than C# or Vala?I think I might be willing to try something bigger or long term with Python. We’re currently doing an ASP.NET MVC project on C#, and I don’t like the amount of reflection. There’s a lot of magic that pulls values out, and it’s all done under the scenes. It’s almost managed to put a dynamic type system on top of C#, which in many ways destroys the language to me, whereas if you’re already in a dynamic language, having things done dynamically is much more natural. In many ways, you get the worst of both worlds. I think for web projects, I would go with Python again, whereas for anything desktop, command-line or GUI-based, I’d probably go for C# or Vala, depending on what environment I’m in.It’s the fact that you can gain from the strong typing in ways that you can’t so much on the web app. Or, in a web app, you have to use dynamic typing at some point, or you have to write a hell of a lot of boilerplate, and I’d rather use the dynamic typing than write the boilerplate.What do you think separates great programmers from everyone else?Probably design choices. Choosing to write it a piece of code one way or another. For any given program you ask me to write, I could probably do it five thousand ways. A programmer who is capable will see four or five of them, and choose one of the better ones. The excellent programmer will see the largest proportion and manage to pick the best one very quickly without having to think too much about it. I think that’s probably what separates, is the speed at which they can see what’s the best path to write the program in. More Red Gater Coder interviews

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• Web Application Vulnerability Scanner suggestions?

  - by Chris_K

  I'm looking for a new tool for the ol' admin toolkit and would value some suggestions. I would like to do some "automated" testing of handful of websites for XSS (cross site scripting) vulns, along with checking for SQL injection opportunities. I realize that an automated tool approach isn't necessarily the only or best solution, but I'm hoping it would give me a nice start. The sites I need to scan cover the range in stacks from PHP / MySQL to Coldfusion, with some classic ASP and ASP.NET mixed in for good measure. What tools would you use to scan for Web application vulns? (Please note I'm focusing on the web apps directly, not the servers themselves).

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• Tool needed for remote software deployment to Windows PC's over internet

  - by user56527

  Hi Can anyone recommend a commercial software package that enables automated rollouts of a bespoke software package across the internet? We are looking at approximately 1000 remote PC's that our organisation owns, geographically scattered and with varying bandwidths available from a central site. The PC's are not manned, they are used as server machines. The tool needs to have some scripting facilities too. The tool needs to be able to push software to the remote site in an automated way. We also need it to be able to reboot the remote machine too. Any ideas anyone? thanks.

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• Can I setup GMail to read in my work email (work email is IMAP)

  - by Andrew G. Johnson

  I don't want to setup forwarding if possible, just some kind of automated checking on Gmail's end

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• Is there any way of preventing .csv files being converted into excel format

  - by Kevin Trainer

  I'm trying to work with an automated testing tool which can use .csv files as its data sourse. After saving a notepad file containing a number of fields and data seperated by commas as .csv it appears to have been converted to an excel file. When I run the test, only the first line of values is identified and can be run within the automated test. Not sure if this is expected with the testing product (www.badboy.co.au), but just wondered if there was a way of preventing excel from taking control of the .csv file? Any helpfull feedback would be great.

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• getting started automating virtualization with powershell on windows

  - by fschwiet

  What are some good books or resources for learning automate virtual PCs on Windows DataCenter? I want to be able to build VPCs with both automated installs and from images, preferably via powershell. I would like to be able to setup an IIS environment for automated testing, and configure end user installs of different versions of Windows. I am not interested in corpnet type scenarios (active directory, domains, etc) so much for now. I'm comfortable with powershell and programming in general. I haven't yet installed Windows DataCenter, maybe once I install it will be clear enough. But looking for resources on how to managed virtual PCs programmatically I haven't found anything.

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• TechEd 2012: Day 3 &ndash; Build Me A Solution

  - by Tim Murphy

  While digesting my lunch it was time to digest some TFS Build information. While much of my time is spent wearing my developer’s hat I am still a jack of all trades and automated builds are an important aspect of any project.  Because of this I was looking forward to finding out what new features are available in the latest release of Team Foundation Server. The first feature that caught my attention is the TFS Admin Client.  After being used to dealing with NAnt in the past it is nice to see a build a configuration GUI that is so flexible and well thought out.  The bonus is that it the tools that are incorporated in Visual Studio 2012 are just as feature rich.  Life is good. Since automated builds are the hub of your development process in a continuous integration shop I was really interested in the process related options. The biggest value add that I noticed was merge gated check-ins.  Merge or batch gated check-ins are an interesting concept.  If the build breaks with all the changes then TFS will run separate builds for each of the check-ins.  This ability to identify the actual offending check-in can save a lot of time and gray hair. The safari of TFS Build that was this session was packed with attractions.  How do you set it up builds, what are the different flavors of builds, how does the system report how the build went?  I would suggest anyone who is responsible for build automation spend some serious time with TFS 2012 and VS2012. del.icio.us Tags: Team Foundation Server 2012,TFS,Build,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Visual Studio 2012

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• Troubleshooting EBS Discovery Issues - Part 2

  - by Kenneth E.

  Part 1 of “Troubleshooting EBS Discovery Issues”, which was posted on May 17th, focused on the diagnostics associated with the initial discovery of an EBS instances (e.g., Forms servers, APPL_TOPs, databases, etc.).Part 2 focuses on verifying parameters of the Change Management features, also called "Pack Diagnostics, specifically for Customization Manager, Patch Manager, Setup Manager, Automated Cloning, and User Monitoring.  As stated in the first post, there can be numerous reasons that Discovery fails - credentials, file-level permissions, patch levels - just to name a few.The Discovery Wizard can be accessed from the EBS homepage.  From the home page, click "Pack Diagnostics"Click "Create" to define the diagnostic processProvide the required inputs; Name, Module (i.e., Customization Manager, Patch Manager, Setup Manager, Automated Cloning, and User Monitoring), Show Details (typically "All"), and Category (typically check both Generic and User Specific).  Add the appropriate targets.Once the diagnostic process has completed, view the results.  Click on "Succeeded" or "Failed" in the Status column.Expand the entire tree and click on each "Succeeded/Failed" status to see the results of each test within that task.Sample output verifying o/s user name and required patches Additional sample output showing a failed testComplete descriptions of, as well as recommended corrective actions for, all of the diagnostic tests that are run in EM 12c is found in this spreadsheet.  Additional information can be found in the Application Management Pack User Guide.

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• MTN WMS Implementation Story

  - by aditya.agarkar

  MTN is Africa's largest cellular phone company serving millions of customers across 21 countries. MTN uses Oracle WMS to manage its distribution activities and its sizzling growth. Just for perspective, since 2004, Africa has been the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. If you want to know more about MTN and the WMS Project at MTN, a summarized view of MTN WMS project is here. The WMS Project at MTN was presented at Oracle Open World in 2007. The extensive automation at MTN includes interface with Conveyor for item transport, High Speed Sorter for item routing, Put to Light for packing accuracy, ASRS Carousel/Lift for inventory Security and Storage Optimization, Check Weight Scale for shipping accuracy, Automated Carton Erectors for package creation and Automated Carton Labeling. Subsequent to this presentation and their go-live in 2007, the MTN warehouse has scaled new heights. The volume has grown manifolds (as can be expected in a fast growing cellular market). Oracle WMS has been able to scale very well to the increase in volume, just as it was designed to do. Here are a couple of videos that highlight the WMS operations at MTN:  1) Video Interview with Margaretha Theart (Warehouse Manager at MTN) 2) Automation Video at MTN (Hat tip: Syed Imran) Enjoy!

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