monkdiscuss

Multiple considering? (blazar)

I was about to consider is this a username, little confused because of the missing question mark in the node title, which I find mostly annoying. However it has already been considered. Now it has to be said that I followed the first link included here, and I noticed the following:

The janitors's job is to correct the bletcherous mistakes that monks occasionally make in posting; the goal is to keep the quality of the site high. However, janitors are not like newspaper editors: they do not fix problems with spelling, punctuation, grammar, style, tone, or fact. Node authors own their nodes, and they should be encouraged to learn how to post well and to bear responsibility for the quality of the site. Therefore: Help authors to help themselves; don't consider the small stuff.

So, now that I know, I will refrain from the temptation of considering in this particular case and in similar ones. (Although sometimes janitors do fix problems with spelling or typos, eh planetscape?) ;-P

However, in more serious situations, in which a node may have been already considered, but there's something that the person who considered it in the first place didn't notice, what should one do? Just /msg the janitors?!?

In any case it would be nice if in the node 28877 page there were some room for discussion. I am aware that it is mostly a listing in the same sense as e.g. node 131 are, but in the same vein and philosophy¹ as everything in the everything2 is a node, perhaps the actual consideration text, however brief it is, should be one, reachable somewhere and repliable to. I imagine this would require major modifications to the current code, anyway, and I don't know if would be worth the effort.

¹ Update: thanks, GrandFather.

is this a username, little confused (greatshots)

I have no idea what you're talking about, so here's a bunny with a pancake on its head.. what/why/who is this all about? I have no idea on this funny.

20061026 Unconsidered by Corion: keep: 10 edit: 13 reap: 2, was considered for title change

How 'bout a

 (and other stuff) warning? (blazar)

Since both the "page too wide" (Perl Monks) FAQ and the incident it refers to tend to come out quite so often, but it's also true at the same time that there are (rarer) cases in which

 tags are useful (I stumbled into one such case a few days ago), I wonder whether it would be possible to implement a visually distinctive warning signaling  tags (and other potentially "risky" stuff like long unbreakable lines which should be easy enough to detect) to the effect of something along the lines of:
You used  tags: they can cause some inconveniences as detailed in this FAQ, do you really need them? If so, then check you don't have excessively long lines. If not, please consider using  tags instead.
These warnings of course should pop up after hitting the preview button, but then I think it would be sensible to have them pop up and act like in preview mode even if the author enabled the "no forced preview" setting in their user settings. Indeed knowledgeable users will... know in advance and probably only seldom meet the warning, and if and when they do, it won't be a major hassle to them to press an additional button.



Perl Monks Statistics Menu Addition (madbombX)
Monks,I was looking around the monastary curious about the stats of other monks and even about the site in general.  I asked in the CB if there were any statistics pages.  I was pointed over to http://tinymicros.com/pm/index.php?goto=MainPage.  This site is a great and has a lot of interesting information.
That being said, I have been roaming around the monastary for a while and had never even heard of this.  I was wondering why this site isn't advertised more.  Is there any reason in particular?  If not, why isn't it on the main menu or at least a default on the side bar menu?
I think it should be added as there has obviously been quite a bit of time put into the site itself and its worthy of some recognition and regular use.  Thoughts?
Update: It's been brought to my attention that there is also a site with CB stats.  Thus something along the lines of a stats node can be created.  It can have links to both sites, plus whatever else might be out there that isn't mentioned (please mention in reply if you put your hard work into it).


Something Amiss with Seekers Page? (jkeenan1)
I am experiencing a problem viewing the Seekers of Perl Wisdom page.  The main frame is running way off the right-hand margin of the screen, meaning that I have to scroll right to get to the Chatterbox, etc.I am getting this problem through two different browsers (Mozilla and Safari).  The problem is not occurring on other pages (e.g., Monastery Gates, Meditation, Recent Threads).
Does anyone know what is amiss?
Jim Keenan


Feature request: Alert when node approved or front pages (jimbus)
It would be cool if root messaged you when your node was approved or front paged like it does when you get a reply or your title has been changed
--Jimbus aka Jim Babcock
Wireless Data Engineer and Geek Wannabe
jim-dot-babcock-at-usa-dot-com
2006-10-17 Retitled by GrandFather, as per Monastery guidelines 
Original title: 'site suggestion'


learnt from mistakes (jesuashok)
How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism?
what do you wall want me to do now? can I access monks as a anonymous monks or that too not allowed ? 
I make sure that this will not happen again. I deliver my own ideas from now on. that is the assurance I can give from my side.
I did a mistake, I am also ready to face the consequences.

update 1 Corrected a typo.
update 2 I am extremly Sorry for making such a damage to perl monks.
"Keep pouring your ideas"


Some sites cause Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. Surely not PerlMonks? (monkeriffic)
Hi,Great site, very popular around the world. I am new here and grateful to be here. I have one question: Is there a way to post in a conventional manner - such that I don't have to add line breaks - and paragraph marks 
 where the site just accepts my text in a way that other sites do, ie. it basically posts what I wrote with no additional coding needed? 
After coding all day, I suppose I would be happy not to code questions about my code...if you know what I mean.
I think I'm getting carpel tunnel syndrome, and yet Microsoft and some sites want to add keystroke upon keystroke and sometimes I ask, "Are all those extra keystrokes necessary?" 
Human bodies do wear out after all. Ask around at those who are at the computer all day if extra keystrokes matter or not. 
I could be wrong...but I think they do and curse apps that love to add them.
Of course, peace and love all around here...because surely there is a way to avoid the extra keystrokes? How hard would it be to accept text as typed as default but allowing users to choose the Carpel Path if they desire that?
Thanks!
Love,
Leslie


Free nodelet hack: Consideration shortcuts (Hue-Bond)
Following tye's suggestion, I've put up this little piece of javascript code for making the life of Friars and above a little easier. This is my first javascript snippet (besides alert ('Hello, World!');) and I thing it's pretty good looking. I just would like to get rid of that 6 repeated 
s.
When you select either "Add code tags" or "Add readmore tags", the proper message is included in the text box, and it's marked read only. In the case of "Retitle" or "Reap", the text "Retitle: " or "Reap: " is automatically added to the textbox, and the user is expected to fill in some further details (like the new title or the reason to reap a node), or enter other completely different reason (ie, the radio buttons are not a contract). In case the user selects "Other", the textbox is emptied.
This "Other" and the original checkbox "Consider node" serve the same purpose, more or less. The radio button can be safely eliminated from the form, or the original checkbox can be hidden for consistency ("I want only radio buttons!").
It's "tested" in Mozilla 1.7.12, IE 6.0 (winxp) and IE 5.0 (win98). "tested" ~~ "all buttons work as expected", I actually used it a couple of times in Mozilla. After all, once the desired text is in the textbox, the rest is the same as before ("It should work"™). There are were a couple of additional features in the works, waiting to get some testing.
Special thanks to jdporter and Corion for their kindness and support.
Update: Incorporated that nice refactoring by Corion. Added hue_mangle_text(). Now, a consideration with a text of "Reap: " (with a space and no explanation) will be changed to "Reap: empty" so considerating empty nodes for reaping becomes a matter of using just the mouse. If you add a number ("Reap: 42"), it will be promoted to a link ("Reap: duplicate of [id://42]"). || Added some improvements by [ikegami]. || Added three more options per [Arunbear] request; they are commented to show how easily you can have exactly the options you want. The "Reparent" option changes numbers into links too.
-- 
David Serrano


Your Undeservingly Unappreciated Nodes (monarch)
Much has been said about XP on Perlmonks. It is something we all like to have even if we don't necessarily base our actions around doing unscrupulous to get it.How often have you written a complex, well thought out, specific reply (perhaps including working tested code) in reply to someone and got maybe 1, 2, or just a handful of XP for it, whilst someone else made a generic comment and scored 10s of points!
Well now is your time to shine. Post your links to some of the nodes you authored and toiled on for few XP. I'm curious to see some of the great nodes I missed!
Here's some links I'm proud of though they weren't popular: Re^3: Where is the bug in this Net::SNMP code?, Re: WWW::Mechanize submission problem, Re: Put file on webserver via HTTP, Re^2: IO::Select on an IO::Pipe not doing anything, Re^3: Logging into telnet using a socket.
PS: please don't upvote any of the nodes I provided, I'm not looking for XP through this meditation.


Firefox Extension for the CB? (ghenry)
Dear All,
I usually use Sporty's Katterbox, but his site seems to have changed, which means no more webstart.
I've always wanted to have a go at a Firefox extension, and there seems to be loads of tutorials out there. Would this be of interest to anyone, or has someone done one already?
Gavin.
Walking the road to enlightenment... I found a penguin and a camel on the way.....
Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!


PerlMonks XP Value (Velaki)
Note:The following represents my personal opinion on the items discussed below:
Why are there experience points?
It's a method, adopted by Perl Monks, tomeasure the level of participation of a monk, and the quality/efficacy of that monk's write-ups.
Do XPs have any value?
Within Perl Monks, XPs serve to provide both a reward for participants, and a means by which one may gauge the relative expertise of a particular Monk in a quantitative way.
Outside Perl Monks, I have many times experienced employers using a person's Perl Monks rank/XP total as a fair rating of that person's overall Perl abilities/reputation, and have made hiring decisions based upon it, just as planetscape notes in his her observation.
Perl Monks is a reputable site of a wonderful mix of beginners and experienced Perl minds, alike.  A person can peruse this site, ask questions, and even receive responses from the authors of the books they use to perform their daily Perl tasks.  There is a plethora of people of varying experience here, and the major thing that unites this community is a love of programming and using Perl.  After all, this is a volunteer endeavor.  It is this very sense of a professional, voluteer community with expert knowledge, which has earned Perl Monks the excellent reputation it has.  Given that positive aspect, there is value in being a member, as viewed not only be the Perl community, but the business world as well. 
A Perl Monk is a special individual, and to those who need a Perl solution to their problem, this is the place; these, the people, to which many come.  As for the wanton and reckless pursuit of XPs by any means as if Perl Monks were just another video game to be beaten, that behavior ought to be discouraged in the strictest of terms, since it ultimately affects the perceived reputation of the site.
The value of PerlMonks XPs are that they represent, in part, the quality of the site.  This quality is often the benchmark for Perl excellence.  Let's work to keep it that way.
Musing...
-v.
Update: Corrected planetscape's gender in my post. { Sorry about that. }
"Perl.  There is no substitute."


Unicode characters in  blocks (Joost)

This node by Nik confused me greatly.Apparently, if you post unicode characters in a  block, you see the numeric HTML entities instead of the characters. I expect this is due to some kind of double encoding bug.
Example:
Here are some random unicode characters I randomly selected:
حيض,πβΫ
Here are the same characters in a  block:
حيض,πβΫ
And here are the same characters in a  block:
حيض,πβΫ
Note that I didn't use any HTML numeric references myself - I just copy/paste the characters from the gnome "charmap" program into the textfield.
Below is the relevant part of the HTML source to this page:
Here are some random unicode characters I randomly selected:
حيض,πβΫ
Here are the same characters in a <pre> block:
حيض,πβΫ
And here are the same characters in a <code> block:
&#1581;&#1610;&#1590;,&#960;&#946;&#939;
As you can see, in the  block, the numeric entitie's & chars are incorrectly escaped. I think is is a pretty serious issue now that perl can handle native utf8 source.
Also, I notice that these characters are also doubly escaped in the textarea field that I'm typing in now (i.e. you can enter unicode chars in the textfield, but at preview, in the textfield, you'll just see a bunch of &#number; entries).
"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"



How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism? (liverpole)
This morning I was chagrined and astonished to discover that 2 people atPerlmonks, [jesuashok] and [madtoperl], have been flagrantly involved inmany instances of plagiarism.It was already clear that [madtoperl] had made quite a few submissionsto the [node://1590|Perl Poetry] section which were not his own, and recently[jesuashok] began emulating this dishonerable practice as well, for whichI was [id://572005|very direct] in admonishing him.
But now it has to come to my attention that both of them have beenstealing other people's questions as well!  This is something Ifind patently offensive, as do a number of other monks, from the messagesI've been getting both in the chatterbox and privately.  What'smore, I don't know which I found more disrespectful, the verbatim,word-for-word copying of other people's work which [jesuashok] practices,as if he couldn't be bothered to change the wording (references: [id://542441|node 542441], [id://526642|node 526642],[id://539378|node 539378], [id://542988|node 542988],[id://542220|node 542220], [id://544852|node 544852],[id://542744|node 542744], [id://543989|node 543989],[id://542227|node 542227], and [id://544769|node 544769]),or the sneaky, deceitful minor rewrites which [madtoperl] engages into attempt to cover his tracks, such as changing variable names orslight alterations in wording (references: [id://551569|node 551569] and [id://543062|node 543062]).
Both of these monks have been called out for their plagiarism, andhave staunchly denied any wrongdoing, even when presented with irrefutableevidence to the contrary.  It would be one thing, I suppose, tobe caught in the act of committing intellectual fraud, and to back awaysheepishly, or to show signs of contrition and come clean.  Sadly, however, the opposite has been true in both cases.For example, [jesuashok] responded to [id://571932|"I guess the same is thecopy of c program which i saw already somewhere."] with an unrepentant[id://571939|"if you see this "C" program somewhere please let me know. Itis my own effort.  help If you can, otherwise shut."], and [madtoperl], whenconfronted with [id://548919|"Same poem found here too."] desperatelymaintained his charade with [id://548934|"Hi, That was also posted by me."].
It seems this would be an apropos time to pose the question to you,my brethren:  how should plagiarism be handled here at Perlmonks?  I will be patient, and listen to what others think about thissituation, but I feel very strongly that something must be done.  I've attempted to take a step back and look at the facts dispassionately,even to the point of asking myself "am I blowing this out of proportion?"  Yet, from all the responses I've heard from my fellow monks,there is a fair consensus that this cannot be tolerated.
For me, [GrandFather]'s quote sums it up quite nicely:
"I think that plagiarised nodes that have garnered a high rep are a majoraffront and demean the efforts of genuinely helpful people around PM"
And to list some of the reasons that I find this plagiarism sodistasteful:
It is disrespectful to this community that I've come to love
It lowers the standards by which Perlmonks will, unavoidably, be judged
It is demeaning, both those authors whose work has been stolen, and tothose authors at Perlmonks who take pride in the commitment to the quality oftheir questions, answers and Perl code
It is frustrating that Perlmonks is becoming associated with a practicewhich is both unethical and illegal
I await your thoughts on how best to handle this problem.
s''(q.S:$/9=(T1';s;(..)(..);$..=substr+crypt($1,$2),2,3;eg;print$..$/


PerlMonks mirror with RSS and searching (EvdB)
Perlmonks is great but there are some 'features' that I consider to be missing:
  RSS feeds to everything: topics, authors, threads
  Searching the full content quickly with the results shown with context
  Crawlable by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc - so that people searching via search engines can benefit from the knowledge stored here.
To address these issues I've added features to http://prlmnks.org, a site that I first created about a year ago to do the RSS feeds bit. Please take a look and tell me what you think.
Please note that I am not being negative towards perlmonks - I think it is a great resource.


Consideration shortcuts (Hue-Bond)
First of all, I don't think the current method for considering nodes is bad at all. I'm quite comfortable with it. However, it's undeniable that a significant portion of all considerations ask to retitle nodes, reap duplicated ones or add <code> or <readmore> tags to them.
So I thought about adding some shortcuts to these common actions. This is a sample layout (square brackets are check boxes, parentheses are radio buttons):
[ ] Consider node( ) Add code tags( ) Add readmore tags( ) Retitle node( ) Reap duplicate or empty(x) Other[__text_box__][ Moderate button ]
The text in the text box would be ignored if "Add code tags" or "Add readmore tags" were selected. It would contain the new title or the "Other" reason to consider. In case of "Reap duplicate or empty", it would contain the node_id of the duplicated node (or a link to it), or would be empty for the case of an empty node. The option selected by default would be "Other" as shown.
Furthermore, this would bring the possibility of automating the [id://415047|vote on your own considerations]. For example, if "Add code tags", "Add readmore tags" or "Retitle node" are selected, an automatic vote would be cast on "Edit".
What do you think about it? It's not probably worth the effort of developing this for such a small improvement, but I thought it couldn't be bad to share this thought with you all. Maybe someone has a better idea after reading this!
-- 
David Serrano


_new considered harmful (jZed)
Most modern browsers allow you to do some combination of mouse clicks to open a link in either the current window, a new window, or a new tab.  When you set up a page for yourself, you have a fourth option to send links to a frame in the current window.  However, links that force a _new or _blank target prevent you from opening in the current window or in a same-page frame.  In our beloved fullpage chat, the feeds for privatemessages, showotherusers, and showchatmessages all hard code a base target of "_new". The feed for just_search OTOH allows you to specify the base target with a formtarget parameter.
Why do I care?  Well, I'm modifying tye's version of fullpage chat to work like my old Zedulator.  You can grab the new Zedulator here.  I have the search form go to a frame under the chat frame so I can do searches onsite or using google:// etc. and see the result pages in the same window/tab as the chat.  I also have small but expandable frames for private messages and other users.  What I'd like to do is be able to have the chat, private messages, and other user links open in the same bottom frame that the search results do.  That way I can visit a link someone suggests in the cb without leaving the cb.
What would it take to fix this (if you agree it needs fixing)? 
 The easiest would be to hardcode a window/frame name like "pm_display".  If the base target were that instead of "_new", then users of fullpage chat would get the same behaviour as now - it would open in a new tab/window depending on mouse click; while users of Zedulator and other fullpage chat derivatives could create a frame called "pm_display" and the links would then redirect there.
A more complete but more labor intensive approach would be to make privatemessages, showotherusers, and showchatmessages behave the way just_search does and accept a target parameter.
So, which do you prefer: 1) hardcode a specific frame/window name or 2) add parameters to the existing feeds or 3) nah, leave it like it is.
I'm pretty sure I could implement #1 myself and could probably do #2 with some hints.


XP watching on OS X (jimt)
You know you love your XP¹. I love mine. I cherish it dearly. Nourish it, sing to it, play with it. People say it's unimportant. They say it doesn't matter. They say I shouldn't care. Fools. They never listen to me when I tell them it's important. Never listen. So I'll teach them, I'll teach them all. They'll see. They'll see.
Monks is that you? Lord knows it's me. Assign me some arbitrary number and tell me what little hoops to jump through to make it go up and lordy, I am there. Surely, I'm not alone.
But who has the time to constantly monitor their XP? We're talking about opening up a browser (if one isn't already open), typing in a URL (unless it's bookmarked), and then waiting an excruciating amount of time for a reply to finally know if your cool new node about using perl for spying on your neighbor's dog has gone up. Who has the time? I sure don't.
Now, you fancy winders users have your node 178414. Or you have your node 65221 or your RSS Feeds For XP Whores And Stats Junkies or http://tinymicros.com/pm/ or your node 65220, I think all of which are thanks to our friends at Twitching Monks Software Productions.
But there are downsides, oh yes. XPFixation is Windows only. The other ones require commands and executing and stuff. And I ask you - if I can't take the time to open my browser, how can you think I can take the time to type in a command somewhere? Hmmm? Answer me that one, smart guy.
So what are us statistically inclined Macintosh loving MacOS X users to do? Why, we'll now use PM XP Junkie, of course! Fire it up, and a cute little number pops up in your menu bar, constantly reminding you of and taunting you about your XP level. Your XP goes up? The number goes up! Nice and simple. Always there, always watching, so comforting...soothing.
Source is included, but it's 88.6% objective-c. Alas, camelbones doesn't seem to allow me to create an NSStatusItem, at least not a visible one, unless I screwed something up. A request is in to the author, but I just couldn't wait that long. Internally, there's an itty bitty perl script that grabs your total XP out of the XML feed sugested by jdporter below. You can even run that one on the command line, if you're some user of a lesser OS.
Why, literally as I sit here typing this, it just went up by 1. Joy!
FAQ
What whizbang features are going to go in there next?
No clue. Maybe I'll replace the primitive little scraper that just gets your level with something more elaborate that gets all node changes. But that requires additional, you know, effort.
What about using one of the existing perl XP scripts?
Maybe I'll do that, too. I didn't bother to look and see if such a thing existed until very late in the game, since it absolutely had to be written yesterday (Oh god!), and by that point I was just too lazy.
Can I just swap in a different fetcher script?
Please do. All source code is included. Distributed under the Artistic License.
But what about insert name of existing XP monitoring tool on OS X?
Clearly, I couldn't find it.
I've got a blue screen of death. What do I do now?
You're monitoring the wrong kind of XP.
What's that URL, again?
http://bassetsoftware.com/perl/pmxpjunkie.dmg.gz
¹that's "experience points", not "backasswards OS"


men picture at the top right corner in perlmonks.org (greatshots)
respected monks,In perlmonks home page, Some guys pictures are getting displayed randomly at the top right corner. what is that all about ? whose pictures are those ? is there any reason to display those images ( behind the screen ) ? 


attaching screen shots in "SoPW" if required (greatshots)
respected monks,Is it possible to attach screen shots when I create a node ?


GD::Graph and Unicode (emav)
I've been trying to test GD::Graph and Unicode using a code snippet from bioportal.weizmann.ac.il but either I'm doing something wrong or GD::Graph does not support Unicode. Hopefully, you can spot my mistake.use utf8;use GD::Graph::linespoints;@data = (     ["1st","2nd","3rd","4th","5th","6th","7th", "8th", "9th"],    [undef,  52,  53,  54,  55,  56,  undef,  58,  59],    [60,  61,  61,  undef,  68,  66,  65,  61, undef],);$my_graph = new GD::Graph::linespoints( );$my_graph->set(         x_label => 'X Label',        y_label => 'Y label',        title => 'A Lines and Points Graph',        y_max_value => 80,        y_tick_number => 6,        y_label_skip => 2,        markers => [ 1, 5 ],);my $ustring1 = "\x{263A}";my $ustring2 = "\x{263A}";$my_graph->set_legend( $ustring1, $ustring2 );my $gd = $my_graph->plot(\@data);open(IMG, '>uni.gif') or die $!;binmode IMG;print IMG $gd->gif;close IMG;


www.perlmonks.org - story (greatshots)
respected monks,where can I get the history of this wonderful site? 
history I mean :-
when did perlmonks come alive ? and etc .. etc .. stories


Issue with timeout on accept system call (Anonymous Monk)
Hello
We have upgraded from Perl 5.6.1 to 5.8.7 . The OS is HP UX 11.11. The Oracle database has also been upgraded from 10i to 11G.
We are continuously receiving "Interrupted System Call" in the new version of Perl (5.8.7).  Is there a differnce in the amount of time to perform the accept system call (or timeout) in the two version of Perl.
If so does any have an suggestion to resolve the same? 



"Interrupted system call" (Anonymous Monk)
Hi
After upgrading the perl from 5.6.1 to 5.8.7., accept() function in one of server is failing many times with the error message "Interrupted system call".
Could anyone explain the reason for receiving this error signal continuously.
Please help us out from this problem
Thanks in Advance
Anju.


finding all the nodes which has 0 (no) reply (greatshots)
how can I find list of nodes which has no reply, from monks discussion, SoPW... etc ... etc


Monk of the Month (Gavin)
In the short time I have been a student of perl and PerlMonks I never cease to be amazed at the amount of time and expertise many Brethren spend in helping others, their only reward being the self satisfaction and a possible small boost to XP. 

I dont know if the following has been suggested before but perhaps we could have.
 A Monk of the Month
  
Brethren could nominate the Monk they felt had done most for the Monastery in the previous month. 
I think many would feel it was a small way of repaying what may have gone unrecognised.

I know that that we are not supposed to take XP too seriously but I have to admit that I like to follow the progress of the regular contributors to the Monastery as they progress.  I think it would be nice to see a mention somewhere when progressing to a higher level. 
On a similar theme perhaps we could also include the latest Initiates who I think are listed at the bottom Newest Nodes and welcome them to the Monastery.

Gavin


perlmonks login status (greatshots)
gingly monks,I have logged out from perlmonks then I went to my friend's place. in his system still it shows that I have logged in perl monks.
what is the reason for that ?


Synonyms/misspellings and searching (chargrill)
I recently noticed a node where the OP asked about a 'scaler', when most of us know they meant scalar.  Naturally, someone considered the node for editing s/scaler/scalar/;.
I couldn't find anything about it - perhaps my search terms were off... but could we have some intelligence in the searches for commonly misspelled (or mis-termed?) terms?  scaler->scalar comes to mind, as does trinary->ternary*.
Seems to me this wouldn't be that much skin off our collective nose (performance-wise), given a sufficiently small dictionary of common misspellings/misused/mistaken terms, of which I can't think of too many others at the moment.  But I certainly wouldn't recommend this approach for regular dictionary words - just very perl-centric terms.
 
 
* Not technically a misspelling.  But I think you know what I mean :)


--chargrill
$,=42;for(34,0,-3,9,-11,11,-17,7,-5){$*.=pack'c'=>$,+=$_}for(reverse split//=>$*){$%++?$ %%2?push@C,$_,$":push@c,$_,$":(push@C,$_,$")&&push@c,$"}$C[$#C]=$/;($#C>$#c)?($ c=\@C)&&($ C=\@c):($ c=\@c)&&($C=\@C);$%=$|;for(@$c){print$_^$$C[$%++]}


plz replace this super ugly & damned bad board by a supergood one: take open source [of course] (perl_lover_girl)
hi There, again i am  a newby to this - have asked several things. 

http://perlmonks.com/?node_id=569435

to avoid any missunderstanding - Your expertise and your knowledge is oustanding  and you have many many great members here. BUT

 interaction needs the best tools available. 

The threadstructure here and the usability is very very bad.

cmon guyz - plz take a good board like the phpBB.com bulletin board. Your board has absolutely no usability 

see the board on www.devshed.com 



see also the boards forums on http://www.perl-forum.org and phpBuilder.com 

jsut my two cents 

your perl lover girl  Considered by marto: Please reap, other posts of exactly the same question have been answered. 
  Unconsidered by planetscape: keep (and edit) votes prevented reaping ( keep: 26 edit: 1 reap: 23 )
2006-08-28 Retitled by g0n, as per Monastery guidelines 
Original title: 'OT: plz replace this super ugly & damned bad board by a supergood one: take open source of course'


Jokes, ad-hominem attacks, and sensitivity (radiantmatrix)
One of the things I love about this æthereal Monestary we tend is how laid-back the moderation system is.  Partly, this is because the majority of our bretheren and visitors are reasonably well-behaved, and partly it is because it takes a fair bit to get our collective hackles up.
Of course, we do have our limits: ad hominem attacks are rarely tolerated, and they are never deemed appropriate.  Even here, though, it takes a fairly eggregious case to invoke the dreaded NodeReaper.
However, this response to this node does raise a question.  Now, I have several responses in that (admittedly horribly off-topic) thread that pretty clearly state my position: less-than flattering references to religious figures, especially when intended to be humorous, are not something I think is inappropriate.
On the other hand, it's pretty clear that some people were seriously offended.  Because of that, I think it's worth some open debate; however, I don't want to get into arguing the fate of that particular thread.  Rather, I'd like to pose a broader debate.
From one point of view, I certainly have no desire to promote behavior that would alienate members of the Monestary.  However, there are two other points of view to consider.  Firstly, when we start trying to define what "offensive" material is, we can get onto a very slippery slope: especially when it comes to spiritual beliefs.  Secondly, I know that I am not so easily offended when people poke fun at my beliefs, and I suspect many of my fellow Monks feel the same.
So, where should we draw the line?
<–radiant.matrix–>
A collection of thoughts and links from the minds of geeks
The Code that can be seen is not the true Code
I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet


Nodelet Nodelet not working? (andyford)
Am I missing something? Does the Nodelet Nodelet not do anything?Is this another one of those deals where it does something embarrassing to me in the chatterbox everytime I use it?andyford 
or non-Perl: Andy FordUpdate: changed title to not clash with the real Nodelet Nodelet. OOops!


[cpan://] doesn't go anywhere useful (ikegami)
[cpan://|[cpan://]] doesn't link to anywhere useful. Maybe it should go to http://search.cpan.org/ or to http://www.cpan.org/.


Optional vote explanation box as an anonymous message sender. (imp)
Sometimes there are nodes that are voted down for reasons that are obvious to the voter, but a mystery to the node's author.When reading Put your mouth where your money is? it occurred to me that one way to  clarify the rationale behind the downvote would be to have a one line text input on the same row as the vote buttons. The text input here would be sent as a message to the node's author, and not be visible to other users. You could also send positive messages of course. It might be nice to make this message anonymous to keep the spirit of voting intact.
Due to what could be a large number of messages being sent it might be good to categorize the messages generated and provide an option to ignore them.


New levels and new habits (holli)
So it's about some time ago, the new levels where introduced. It's a common behaviour that people posted much more answers before they became Saint in the old level system, than they did after Sainthood. Of course that is related to our beloved/behated XP game. Now, most of us are no saints anymore (though we're still listed in Saints in our Book). 

The question:
Did the fact you're no saint anymore affect your posting  frequency? Are you back in the XP game?

update: fixed spelling

holli, /regexed monk/


Yet Another Name Space in Perl Monks (prasadbabu)
With reference to this node 110166, here is a crazy and silly thinking.

I see in Perl Monks, after some days some of them may feel now that they would have opted a better username for Perl Monks. Some were already proposed to god and ended with happy (For example monkfan)and some with sad (For Example uva). Some would have thought of a username as good one but they can see now that some of them is already using that username now. Some would have forgotten the Password like me (first created prasadjp). Share your similar experiences like this.

Everyone in the world like to have one more chance when they failed in something.

So here is a go, suppose Perl Monks god is forgiving everyone and giving another chance to every monk to change their username, even if the chosen name already exists, what username ll you choose? If you wish, give the reason also. :-)
Prasad


Put your mouth where your money is? (Moron)
It seems to me to be a major contributing factor to the fact that members don't really take the experience system too seriously given that it is so easy to vote without even really reading the post.An idea occurred to me which might improve that situation:
Only allow a node to be voted on if the voter has published a reply to the node in question.
This encourages respondents to demonstrate in their reply that they have understood the post to the extent that they are able to add, resolve, criticise constructively (rather than just by pressing the minus button) and so on.
A by-product is that the qualifying replies would thereby enable the right of reply and ensure that voting and replying carry equal risk as well as equal benefit.
It was Evelyn Beatrice Hall (in a publication of a group called The Friends of Voltaire) who said, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  I don't recall where it was written, but I believe what Voltaire himself actually wrote was more along the lines of, "One's right to an opinion depends upon one's ability to defend it with supporting argument." (!)
Although, superficially and only relatively, such a measure would have the impact of making it slower per vote to get through the quota, the value of each vote to the community would increase in far greater proportion than this so quotas could be reduced in line with the increased effort to exhaustively cast them.Another obstacle this would introduce is that it might be considered unfair to allow pre-existing votes to have the same value as the newer more expensively-acquired ones.   There are two approaches I can see to that so far: (1) cash the old ones in at an exchange rate of several to one or (2) save up all good but difficult improvements suggested for the site and when there are enough of them, address them collectively in a migration plan.
-M
Free your mind


Node trackbacks? (husker)
What about a feature that would, for a given node, show all other nodes which reference it?  Of course the documentation nodes and those kind of "general purpose" nodes would have tremendous numbers so we'd likely want to exclude those (i.e., we don't need to know that Voting/Experience System has been referenced 12,445 times), so we would limit it to SOPW, CUFP, Meditations, Discussions, etc. What do you think?


Feature Request: Most Divisive Nodes (andyford)
We have Best Nodes & Worst Nodes, so we know where we agree. How about exploring where we don't agree?
I'd love to be able to pull up a list of nodes that have lots of votes, but where the up and down votes are nearly equal, say, within 10% or so.
I have a node that currently is at +6/-6 and while I was pondering the thinking of those who downvoted it, it occurred to me, "Gee, I wonder what else divides the Monks?"
So interesting!


PerlMonks markup (GrandFather)
I've currently returned to doing a little work on PMEdit (see [id://543242]). After mostly fixing a nasty rendering problem I find I need to know which PM specific markup is block level, which is not and which is both.
For example, c or code is both. readmore is block level only. spoiler I presume is not block level.
Can someone confirm that I have that much right, or at least point me at the code where such things are handled?
What other PM/everything specific markup need I be aware of? (I've checked [id://29281] btw.)
Update: Should PMEdit render nested elements correctly? For example:
italic bold italic bold
still bold. normal
renders as:
italic bold italic bold
still bold. normal
which, although expected, is rather frowned on. Would it be appropriate for PMEdit to coerce that to:
italic bold italic bold
still bold. normal
which renders as:
italic bold italic bold
still bold. normal
Update: Should formating be supported across code blocks. For example:
code block italicised
Renders as:
code block italicised
DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel


number of replies displayed beside a node (jesuashok)
dear monks,I have noted many times that the number of replies which is displayed beside a node is misleading.
For example today morning I have read this node BerkeleyDB locks, the number of replies to this node is shown as 7 replies, but it is not same when I see the actual replies.
Monks, please check the number of replies for the node which I have specified.
"Keep pouring your ideas"


Help with logging in (Anonymous Monk)
I can log in, but when I try to post anything or go to a new page, I'm logged out. I am using Tor if that makes any difference. Please help me!Thanks for any help!


Proposed US ban on school/library access to 'social networking sites' (g0n)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/01/social_networking_ban/According to the penultimate paragraph, PM will fall under the scope of this. It seems like something of a scattergun approach.
Update: As tye rightly pointed out in his consideration, I should have included more discussion. I intended to prompt discussion of what PM (and by extension other similar sites) should do (if anything) about this, which is why I placed this in PMD. I didn't intend to provoke a political flamewar. Sorry.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."
John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider".
Can you spare 2 minutes to help with my research? If so, please click here
20060803 Unconsidered by Corion: Was considered for moving to Perl News; Keep: 9, Edit: 28, Reap: 4


What qualifies as copyrighted material? (rodion)
From the  "Site How To", "Where should I post X" section it looks like this is where I ask my question, mundane as it is. Sorry for the boring contentI have a picture of my dog reading Best Practices that I would like to post to my homenode. (It has the notation "Doggedly Pursuing Better Perl".) The top portion of the book's cover, including the dog on the cover and the word "Perl", but neither the words "Best Practices" nor anything below that, appear in part of the bottom third of the picture.  Will those who monitor for copyrighted material on PM consider my un-copyrighted picture as having "Fair use" of copyrighted material within it, and therefore acceptable, or is it to be excluded because there is a part of some copyrighted material within the picture? (Would a can of Coke(TM) in a picture cause it to be excluded?)
 I want to follow the rules, and so I'd like to know what the rules cover before I make a mistake.
Updated:Corrected to "homenode"


Section proposal: Best CPAN Modules (ptum)
I've noticed a recent trend of folks expressing some frustration with the abundance of choices in terms of CPAN modules, and wishing for a way to separate the wheat from the chaff (or perhaps my metaphor would better be, 'separate the wheat from the quinoa'):
562138
551585
563069
561281
... and I'm sure there are lots more.  Let's face it -- most of us are busy people and can not spare a lot of time browsing through CPAN.  Heck, I'm feeling guilty about taking the time to write this node.  While I am quite gleeful about the fact that CPAN nearly always has a module that helps me do what I need, it is an unavoidable truth that I don't have the time or memory to really stay up-to-date on the 'best' solutions.
Without wanting to start a flame war or hurt anyone's feelings, it seems evident that for some tasks, some modules are 'better' than others, depending on how you define 'better'.  Here are a few possible criteria:
Simplicity
Extent of adoption (popularity)
Stability & maturity
Portability
Performance
Minimal dependencies on other non-core modules
Not wanting to duplicate the Phalanx Project, I wonder if we at PerlMonks could come up with a reasonably compact and dynamic list of the 'best' modules available?  Perhaps a section of the site could be dedicated to 'most popular modules', where monks could propose an addition to a limited list, and could vote on the usefulness of the modules for a particular task.  Or something like 3559 such that a module only makes it onto the list when it achieves a certain minimum popularity.  Alternatively, I envision something like the Q&A section, but in each subcategory, there is a list of modules (ranked by popularity) that might apply in that context.
Of course, there is a measure of kwalitee already in place, but it doesn't seem widely known or used (or perhaps I expose my ignorance).
I think there are many monks who might be willing to rank modules with a simple vote, who don't really have the time or willingness to write a module review (although you could argue that if a module hasn't attracted a review, it might not be one of the 'best').  We only have about 150 module reviews, though, and there is no visible ranking (apart from node popularity if you spend a vote yourself to see).
What do you think?  What are the 'best' modules from your perspective?  I'll start with a list of those that I personally use and like best (in no particular order), fully expecting others to disagree:
DBI
CGI
CGI::Carp
Data::Dumper
Net::SCP
Mail::Sendmail
CGI::Cookie
File::stat
File::Basename
Net::FTP Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple
Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
GD::Graph (and subclasses)
GetOpt::Long
File::Find
Term::ReadLine
Text::ParseWords
Date::Simple
LWP::UserAgent
WWW::Mechanize Time::Local
Tie::File
XML::Simple
Class::Struct
Net::Telnet
IO::File
BerkeleyDB
Text::CSV
Log::Log4perl (and subclasses)
SOAP::Lite
HTML::TreeBuilder
Other obvious modules I have missed?

No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde
Editted by demerphq to fix rendering of table on picky browsers


What about Bob (and Joe)? (apotheon)
There's a monk that occasionally appears in the top-right of PerlMonks, tonsure and all, that looks like he came from a woodcut portrait.  He's identified by title="Bob" in the markup source.  Similarly, there's what appears to be a Buddhist monk identified as "Joe".
I'm curious about where they got their names.  Is there a story behind this, or was it merely a moment of whimsy?  I'm not even going to ask about that bird-hat thing.
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2); - apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin



Can we save some Postings!! For future use (msk_0984)
 Hello & greetings to all Monks          Actually i would say that its a great place here and the day i have joined here i was just learning and could just  able to see all the reall world problems which i could be facing while i am into my projects . Actually i am fresher and i am in my training period in my organisation and this community was of great help to me. Actually i would  daily see all the questions and answers and also try to answer some.
       But what i wanted to know is that is there any possiblity that i can save any of the postings made by others so that could used for any future references, so that  i could not waste any time to again Search for that if there could be any option so that i can save some of the postings made by others and senoir monks so that could be of great help and reduce the wastage of time to again Search for that Node posted.
  Thanks 
  Sunny 


Nodes to Consider suggestion (DrWhy)
Occasionally when I'm looking over the list of nodes to consider I see a node in which the suggested change has already been made.  I'd like to be able to note this fact as part of the voting, but there is no option to vote for "already been done".  I'd like to see a new feature to communicate this information added to nodes to consider, possibly but not necessarily a new voting choice.  What do the rest of you think of this?  
What do other monks do when they run into this situation?
--DrWhy
"If God had meant for us to think for ourselves he would have given us brains.  Oh, wait..."


node id link forbidden ??? (zentara)
Hi, I just noticed a strange behavior which I havn't seen before. For instance, I was just looking at [id://561749] and tried to click on the link to the main thread in thread Perl is dying (which points to)http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=561229
I get an error
ForbiddenYou don't have permission to access /index.pl on this server.
But when I enter 561229 into the SearchBox, the node comes up. Is something broken? These links always worked before for me.  Do you think something in my local Mozilla cache is screwed up?
I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.Cogito ergo sum a bum


Perlmonks RSS feed (zigdon)
I swear I thought I posted about this a long time ago, but couldn't find it.  Anyway, I've been maintaining a simple RSS feed to show the recent posts on PM.  Apparently, according to bloglines at least, some people have been using it.
  http://www.peeron.com/tickers/pm.xml
Anyway, I just adjusted the feed so that it shows the full text of questions posted, and not just the subject.
Hope others might find this useful!
-- zigdon


Is CGI On-Topic (Anonymous Monk)
Great Monks,
        Confusing.Yeah Is CGI comes under Perl.If any questions comes under topics of HTML,MYSQL,APACHE Server etc..Monks are telling that it is off topic.
        How CGI becomes on-topic.It is "Common Gateway Interface" isn't it.Appreciate anyone pour ideas.
Thanks.


Why Perl Announcements in Newest Nodes? (Anonymous Monk)
On "Newest Nodes", how the label "Perl Announcements" better from "Perl News"?  Why does "Jump to" have different labels at all?


how to select radio button using mechanize module (chandu)
Hi,How to select radio button using mechanize module.I used WWW::Mechanize module and i am wanto select radio button. how i can do.i want to select some buttons by using this module and i want to next processes.can u help regarding this onethanks,chanduchandu_paga@yahoo.com


help match this (Anonymous Monk)
(1) Pertussis vaccination: use of acellular pertussis vaccines among infants and young children.
(2) Use of diphtheria toxoid-tetanus toxoid-acellular pertussis vaccine as a five-dose series. (Addendum)Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Federal Government Agency U.S..1997 Mar 28 (revised 2000 Nov; addendum released 2003 Sep 26).25 pages.NGC:003288can any one please write a matching expression that extract contents between i tried a lot but i am not able to do that.


Google Earth Monks (McDarren)
Howdy :)Over the past week or so, I've been playing around with Google Earth. Very very cool stuff.
Anyway, I thought it would be kinda neat to put Perlmonks on Google Earth, in a similar way that jcwren did with the Big Monk Map, and theorbtwo did with pmplanet.So I hacked together a script to pull the monk location data from tinymicros, and then pull in the other basic Monk data (such as XP level, date joined, number of wtiteups) from Perlmonks.
The end result is a KML placemark file which can be directly imported into Google Earth. For those that have Google Earth installed, or are sufficiently motivated to install it - the placemark file is available here.
At the moment it's fairly rudimentary, with Monks ascii-betically grouped into folders. Clicking on any single monk name brings up some basic info about that monk, and double-clicking zooms to their location (all standard Google Earth behaviour). I did manage to find a rather cute little "monk" to use as an icon for the placemarks :)
I'm a little bit hesitant to post the code I used, mainly because when run it will hit Perlmonks about 800 times, to gather the monk stats. And I don't think we'd suddenly want to have dozens of people doing that ;)
But basically, the code does the following:
Uses LWP::UserAgent to successively pull the Monk location data (Lat/Long) from tinymicros. Because there are around 800 monks that have supplied location data¹, and I can only get 50 records at a time, this takes about 16 hits.
 From the returned pages, it pulls the node ID, username,  Lat and Long for each Monk.
It stuffs this data into a hash, keyed by Monk homenode ID, and uses Storable to save it to disk.
It then iterates through the list of Monks, and using a combination LWP::UserAgent and HTML::TokeParser pulls in the date joined, XP level, and number of writeups for each monk, from their homenode.
Finally, it writes the KML file.
I used Storable to save the data to disk, so that I could re-use the data on subsequent runs (whilst tweaking the script), and not have to continually scrape the data over and over again. This means that the data is already out of date - but shrug, at this stage it's just an exercise for a bit of fun and learning :)
The other thing that occurred to me is that something like this would probably be better integrated into jcwren's existing pmstats at tinymicros - especially as he is already pulling the required data on a daily basis.
It's also possible that somebody has already done this, and so I may have just re-invented another wheel. Although if they have - I couldn't find it. 
So for now I just thought I'd throw this out there, and see what the reaction is.
Enjoy,
Darren :)
¹ For those that are not yet on the Big Monk Map, but would like to be - simply follow the instructions here


Problem on installing DBD-Oracle (SHA)
Hello,I need to connect to a data base (Oracle). So I need to install DBI then DBD modules.At first I have installed "ActivePerl-5.8.8.817-MSWin32-x86-257965.msi" because actually I'm a wondows user. Then I have tried to install "DBI-1.30".  First ->'perl makeFile.pl'  then ->nmake but I got this message: <<<<<nmakeMicrosoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility   Version 1.50Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1988-94. All rights reserved.        cl -c    -nologo -GF -W3 -MD -Zi -DNDEBUG -O1 -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNRICT -DHAVE_DES_FCRYPT -DNO_HASH_SEED -DUSE_SITECUSTOMIZE -DPERL_IMPLICIT_COT -DPERL_IMPLICIT_SYS -DUSE_PERLIO -DPERL_MSVCRT_READFIX -MD -Zi -DNDEBUG -O -DVERSION=\"1.30\"  -DXS_VERSION=\"1.30\"  "-IC:\Perl\lib\CORE"   Perl.c'cl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe' : return code '0x1'Stop.>>>>>


Quote on Perl modules (jesuashok)
dear monks,I am going to deliver a speech on importance of perl modules on July,3rd. I would like to select a nice Quote on Perl modules, which has to express, really the power of perl modules.

Monks, please shower your Quotes about perl modules. The Quote should cover the Broader picture of perl modules, not specific to a single perl module.

For example, If any one starts there speech on 'C' language they used to say C is a Sea. Sameway for perl, some people used to say, perl is really Pearl

Sameway, I need to select a nice quote on Perl modules. Please suggest your Quotes. 

Advancced thanks for all of your inputs.
"Keep pouring your ideas"


Spanish translation of pack/unpack tutorial (Hue-Bond)
I've asked [Pedagogues] what was the procedure to get a translated tutorial into its natural [Tutorials|section]. I was told that it's OK to post it here, so the following discussion would get archived. That's a great idea.
I translated three tutorials into spanish in some spare time I had last week. This is one of them ([id://224666|original], by [id://217641]), one that I found very valuable when I read it. I've incorporated most of the suggestions that the original tutorial received in that thread.
I'm posting the other two within a few days.
Tutorial de pack/unpack
Una conversacin reciente en el chatterbox me dio la idea para escribir esto. Un programador novato estaba intentando codificar algo con pack y unpack pero tena problemas a la hora de controlar su funcionamento exacto. Yo nunca he tenido problema con estas funciones pero tengo conocimientos de hardware y estoy muy familiarizado con programacin en ensamblador y C. Los que llevan poco tiempo programando seguramente no saben nada de estas cosas a tan bajo nivel y pueden no entender cmo los ordenadores almacenan los datos. Conocer un poco esta materia puede hacer de pack y unpack algo ms fcil de entender.
Por qu se necesitan pack y unpack
Perl puede manejar cadenas, enteros y nmeros en coma flotante. De vez en cuando un programador tendr que intercambiar datos con programas escritos en otros lenguajes. Estos otros lenguajes tienen un conjunto mucho ms amplio de tipos de datos. Tienen enteros de distintos tamaos, o pueden ser capaces de manejar solamente cadenas de longitud fija (se puede mencionar COBOL?). Otras veces, puede surgir la necesidad de intercambiar datos binarios con otras mquinas a travs de una red. Estas mquinas pueden tener distintos tamaos de palabra o almacenar los valores de otras formas (una palabra es un conjunto de bits que el ordemador maneja todos juntos). Se hace necesaria alguna manera de convertir nuestros datos a un formato que estos otros programas y mquinas entiendan. Tambin necesitamos poder interpretar las respuestas que nos llegan de vuelta.
Las funciones pack y unpack nos permiten leer y escribir buffers de datos de acuerdo con una plantilla. Esta plantilla nos permite indicar cosas especficas como el orden de los bytes o el tamao de la palabra, o tambin usar los valores por defecto. Esto nos da mucha flexibilidad cuando nos comunicamos con programas externos.
Para entender cmo funciona todo esto, es conveniente saber cmo hacen los ordenadores para almacenar los distintos tipos de informacin.
Formatos enteros
La memoria de un ordenador se puede ver como si fuera una coleccin enorme de bytes. Un byte contiene ocho bits (esto es casi universal) y puede representar valores sin signo entre 0 y 255, o valores con signo entre -128 y 127. No se puede hacer mucho con este rango tan pequeo de valores, por lo que los registros de los ordenadores modernos (un registro esuna pequea parte de memoria, con la que el procesador trabaja directamente) son ms grandes que un byte. La mayora de procesadores modernos usan registros de 32 bits (es decir, 4 bytes) y hay algunos con registros de 64 bits. Un registro de 32 bits puede almacenar nmeros sin signo entre 0 y 4294967295 o nmeros con signo entre -2147483648 y 2147483647.
Al almacenar en memoria valores con un tamao mayor de 8 bits, stos se dividen en segmentos de 8 bits y se almacenan en posiciones consecutivas de la memoria. Algunos procesadores almacenan el segmento que contiene los bits de mayor peso en la posicin de memoria ms baja, y los dems segmentos van a las posiciones siguientes (por ejemplo, en el nmero 1234, la cifra 1 tiene mayor peso que las dems, porque significa 1000). Eso se llama "big-endian". Otros procesadores almacenan primero el segmento que contiene los bits de menos peso, y los dems segmentos van en posiciones superiores. Esto se llama "little-endian".
Lo veremos mejor grficamente. Supongamos que un registro contiene el nmero 0x12345678 y lo vamos a almacenar en la memoria. As es como aparecera:
Direccin Mquina
Big-Endian Mquina
Little-Endian
0 0x12 0x78
1 0x34 0x56
2 0x56 0x34
3 0x78 0x12
Si miramos perldoc -f pack o consultamos la funcin pack en [href://isbn.nu/0596000278|Programming Perl], veremos una tabla que lista todos los caracteres que pueden ir en la plantilla, junto con una descripcin del tipo de dato que significan. Esa tabla lista varios formatos de nmeros enteros de distintos tamaos, con distintos rdenes, y con signo o sin l:
Formato Descripcin
c,C Un valor de tipo char con signo o sin l (entero de 8 bits).
s,S Un valor de tipo short con signo o sin l, siempre de 16 bits.
l,L Un valor de tipo long, siempre de 32 bits.
q,Q Un valor de tipo quad (entero de 64 bits).
i,I Un valor entero con signo o sin l, en el formato nativo de la mquina actual.
n,N Un valor de 16  32 bits con orden "de red" (big-endian).
v,V Un valor de 16  32 bits con orden "VAX" (little-endian).
Los formatos s, l y q empaquetan valores de 16, 32 y 64 bits en el orden nativo de la mquina en la que se ejecute la funcin pack. El formato i empaqueta un valor con un tamao de palabra igual al de la mquina actual. Los formatos n y v nos permiten especificar el tamao y orden de almacenamiento de los bytes, y se usan para intercambiar informacin con otros ordenadores.
Formatos de caracteres
Las cadenas de texto se almacenan como colecciones de caracteres. Tradicionalmente, cada carcter se codificaba usando un solo byte, con un sistema de codificacin como ASCII o EBCDIC. Nuevos sistemas de codificacin como UTF-8 usan codificaciones de, o bien una longitud fija de varios bytes, o bien secuencias de bytes de varias longitudes para representar cada carcter.
La funcin pack de Perl acepta en la plantilla los siguientes caracteres para especificar cadenas de texto:
Formato Descripcin
a,A Una cadena rellena con caracteres nulos/espacios.
b,B Una cadena de bits (binaria) con rdenes de bits ascendiente o descendiente.
h,H Una cadena hexadecimal, con el nybble alto o bajo primero.
Z Una cadena terminada con un carcter nulo.
Un nybble son 4 bits. Un byte se representa en hexadecimal con dos dgitos de 4 bitscada uno, es decir, con dos nybbles.Las cadenas se almacenan en posiciones de memoria sucesivas, con el primer carcter de la cadena en la posicin ms baja de la memoria.
La funcin pack de Perl
La funcin pack acepta una plantilla y una lista de valores. Devuelve un escalar que contiene los valores empaquetados de acuerdo con los formatos especificados en la plantilla. Esto nos permite escribir datos en un formato que luego podr ser ledo por otro programa escrito en C o en otro lenguaje, o pasar datos a un sistema remoto a travs de una red.
La plantilla contiene una serie de letras de las tablas que hay ms arriba. Cada letra va seguida, opcionalmente, de un nmero que indica cuntas veces se ha de repetir este valor (para nmeros) o el tamao (para cadenas). Un '*' en un formato entero le dice a pack que debe usar este formato para el resto de los valores de la lista. Un '*' en un formato de cadena le dice a pack que use el tamao de la cadena.
Probemos un ejemplo. Supongamos que estamos recogiendo informacin de un formulario web y envindoselo a un backend que est escrito en C, para que lo procese. El formulario le permite a un monje solicitar material de oficina. El backend necesita que la informacin est en este formato:
    struct SupplyRequest {        time_t request_time;    // hola de solicitud        int employee_id;        // empleado que la realiza        char item[32];          // material solicitado        short quantity;         // cantidad        short urgent;           // es urgente?    };
Tras comprobar los archivos de cabecera de nuestro sistema, vemos que time_t es de tipo long. Para crear un registro adecuado para el backend, podemos usar lo siguiente:
    $rec = pack( "l i Z32 s2", time, $emp_id, $item, $quan, $urgent);Esta plantilla dice "Un long, un int, una cadena de 32 caracteres terminada en un nulo, y dos shorts".
Si el monje nmero 217641 (anda! si soy yo!) (N del T.: evidentemente, ese no soy *yo*) hace una solicitud urgente de  dos cajas de clips ("boxes of paperclips") el da 1 de Enero de 2003 a la 1:00 de la tarde EST, $rec tendra el siguiente contenido (la primera lnea es decimal, la segunda va en hex, la tercera son caracteres si tiene sentido). Un carcter pipa indica los lmites entre dos campos:
   Desplz.   Contenido (las direcciones de memoria aumentan hacia la derecha)         0   160  44  19  62| 41  82   3   0| 98 111 120 101 115  32 111 102              A0  2C  13  3E| 29  52  03  00| 62  6f  78  65  73  20  6f  66                                            |  b   o   x   e   s       o   f        16    32 112  97 112 101 114  99 108 105 112 115   0   0   0   0   0              20  70  61  70  65  72  63  6c  69  70  73  00  00  00  00  00                   p   a   p   e   r   c   l   i   p   s        32     0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0|  2   0|  1   0              00  00  00  00  00  00  00  00| 02  00| 01  00
Veamos de dnde sale todo esto. El primer elemento de la plantilla es una l, que empaqueta un long. Un long son 32 bits, o 4 bytes. El valor que ha sido almacenado viene de la funcin time. El valor almacenado en realidad es 1041444000, o 0x3e132ca0 en hexadecimal. Ves cmo concuerda con el principio del buffer? Mi sistema tiene un procesador Intel Pentium, que es little-endian.
El segundo elemento de la plantilla es una i. Esto quiere un entero del mismo tamao que un int en la mquina actual. El Pentium es un procesador de 32 bits, por lo que de nuevo empaquetamos el valor en 4 bytes. El nmero de monje es 217641, 0x00035229.
El tercer elemento de la plantilla es Z32. Esto especifica un campo de 32 caracteres terminados con un nulo. Se puede apreciar la cadena "boxes of paperclips" almacenada a continuacin en el buffer, seguida de ceros (caracteres nulos) hasta que se ha llegado al lmite de 32 bytes.
El ltimo elemento es s2. Esto significa dos shorts, que son enteros de 16 bits, lo cual consume dos valores de la lista que se la ha pasado a pack. 16 bits se almacenan en 2 bytes. El primer valor tiene la cantidad 2 y el segundo vale 1, indicando urgencia. Estos dos valores ocupan los ltimos 4 bytes del buffer.
La funcin unpack de Perl
Sin que lo supiramos cuando programamos lo anterior, alguien ha portado el backend de C a Perl. Pero como nosotros ya habamos escrito la parte web de la aplicacin, pensaron que podramos seguir usando el mismo formato de datos. Por tanto, han tenido que usar unpack para leer los datos que nosotros les enviamos.
unpack es lo contrario de pack. pack coge una plantilla y una lista de valores, y devuelve un escalar. unpack coge una plantilla y un escalar, y devuelve una lista.
En teora, si le damos a unpack la misma plantilla y el mismo escalar producido por pack, deberamos obtener de vuelta la lista de valores que le pasamos a pack. Digo en teora porque si el desempaquetado se hace en una  mquina con un orden de bytes distinto (big-endian en oposicin a little-endian) o con un tamao distinto de palabra (16, 32, 64 bits), unpack podra interpretar los datos de forma distinta a como lo ha hecho pack. Los formatos que hemos utilizado especificaban el orden de bytes de la mquina actual e i puede significar tamaos diferentes en mquinas diferentes por lo que podramos tener problemas. Pero en nuestro simple caso, vamos a asumir que el backend se ejecuta en la misma mquina que el interface web.
Para desempaquetar los datos, el backend ejecutara una orden como esta:
    ($order_time, $monk, $itemname, $quantity, $urgent) =        unpack( "l i Z32 s2", $rec );
Ntese que la plantilla es idntica a la que usamos antes al empaquetar, y que pack nos devuelve la misma informacin en el mismo orden.
Formatos enteros
a.k.a. por qu tantos tipos?
Puedes estar preguntndote por qu hay tantas formas distintas de escribir el mismo tipo de datos. i, l, N y V se pueden usar para escribir un entero de 32 bits a un buffer. Por qu usar uno en concreto? Bueno, eso depende de con quin estemos intentando intercambiar informacin.
Si slo vamos a intercambiar informacin con otros programas dentro del mismo ordenador, podemos usar i, l, s y q y sus equivalentes sin signo (en maysculas). Ya que tanto el programa que lee como el que escribe estn en la misma mquina, podemos usar los formatos nativos sin problema.
Si estamos escribiendo un programa para leer archivos cuya distribucin depende de la arquitectura, es mejor usar los formatos n, N, v y V. De esta forma, siempre sabremos que estamos interpretando la informacin correctamente sin importar en qu arquitectura se ejecuta nuestro programa. Por ejemplo, el formato de archivos de sonido "wav" est definido para Windows sobre un procesador Intel, que es little-endian. Si quisiramos leer el encabezado de un archivo wav, deberamos usar v y V para leer valores de 16 y 32 bits respectivamente.
Se dice que los formatos n y N tienen orden "de red" por una razn: ese es el orden especificado para las comunicaciones TCP/IP. Al hacer ciertos tipos de programacin de red, es necesario usar estos formatos.
Formatos de cadenas
Elegir entre los distintos formatos de cadenas es un poco distinto. Normalmente usaremos a, A o Z dependiendo del lenguaje en que est hecho el otro programa. Si el otro programa est en C o C++, probablemente queramos usar a o Z. A sera una buena opcin para comunicarse con programas en COBOL o Fortran.
Los formatos a, A y Z
Al empaquetar, los formatos a y Z rellenarn el espacio sobrante con caracteres nulos (slo cuando especifiquemos un tamao). A rellena lo sobrante con espacios. Al desempaquetar, A elimina el espacio y los caracteres nulos que haya al final, Z quita todo lo que vaya despus del primer carcter nulo y a devuelve el campo entero tal cual.
Ejemplos
    pack  ('a8',"hello")       produce "hello\0\0\0"    pack  ('Z8',"hello")       produce "hello\0\0\0"    pack  ('A8',"hello")       produce "hello   "       unpack('a8',"hello\0\0\0") produce "hello\0\0\0"    unpack('Z8',"hello\0\0\0") produce "hello"    unpack('A8',"hello   ")    produce "hello"    unpack('A8',"hello\0\0\0") produce "hello"
Los formatos b y B
Los formatos b y B convierten cadenas que consisten de caracteres 0 y 1 en bytes, y desempaquetan bytes en cadenas de ceros y unos. Al empaquetar, Perl trata los caracteres con valor par como si fueran un cero, y los caracteres de valor impar como si fueran un uno. La diferencia entre b y B es el orden en que se convierten los bits dentro de cada byte. Con b los bits se espeficican en orden ascendente (primero el de menos peso); con B es al revs. El tamao representa el nmero de bits a empaquetar.
Ejemplos
    ord(pack('b8','00100110')) produce 100 (4 + 32 + 64)    ord(pack('B8','00100110')) produce 38 (32 + 4 + 2)
Los formatos h y H
Los formatos h y H empaquetan cadenas que contienen dgitos hexadecimales. h coge primero el nybble de menos peso, H toma primero el mayor. El tamao indica el nmero de nybbles a empaquetar.
Ejemplos
Cada uno de estos ejemplos devuelve un escalar de dos bytes:
    pack('h4','1234') produce 0x21,0x43     pack('H4','1234') produce 0x12,0x34
Informacin adicional
Perl 5.8 incluye [perldoc://perlpacktut|su propio tutorial] de pack y unpack. Es un poco ms profundo que este pero alguna de las cosas de las que habla pueden ser especficas de Perl 5.8. Los usuarios de Perl 5.6 deben comprobar su propia documentacin si las cosas no funcionan tal como est decrito en ese tutorial.
Existen ms caracteres que se pueden usar en las plantillas, de los que no se habla aqu. Tambin hay formas adicionales de leer y escribir campos ASCII de tamao fijo, as como trucos con los que se puede jugar con pack y unpack. Prueba perldoc -f pack o consulta [href://isbn.nu/0596000278|Programming Perl]. Y sobre todo, no temas experimentar (excepto con programas de verdad). Usa la funcin DumpString de aqu abajo para examinar los buffers devueltos por pack hasta que entiendas cmo manipula los datos.
Referencias
[href://isbn.nu/0596000278|Programming Perl], Tercera Edicin, Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, y Jon Orwant,  2000, 1996, 1991 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-596-00027-8.
Gracias a [bart] por [id://223619|la referencia] al tutorial de pack/unpack de Perl 5.8.
Gracias a [Zaxo] y [jeffa] por revisar este documento y compartir sus propios esfuerzos para crear un tutorial.
Gracias a [sulfericacid] y [PodMaster] por inspirar esto en el CB.
Ejemplo
El siguiente programa contiene los ejemplos de este documento:
#!/usr/bin/perl -wuse strict;# dump the contents of a string as decimal and hex bytes and characters  sub DumpString {    my @a = unpack('C*',$_[0]);    my $o = 0;    while (@a) {        my @b = splice @a,0,16;        my @d = map sprintf("%03d",$_), @b;        my @x = map sprintf("%02x",$_), @b;        my $c = substr($_[0],$o,16);        $c =~ s/[[:^print:]]/ /g;        printf "%6d %s\n",$o,join(' ',@d);        print " "x8,join('  ',@x),"\n";        print " "x9,join('   ',split(//,$c)),"\n";        $o += 16;    }}# place our web ordermy $t = time;my $emp_id = 217641;my $item = "boxes of paperclips";my $quan = 2;my $urgent = 1; my $rec = pack( "l i a32 s2", $t, $emp_id, $item, $quan, $urgent);DumpString($rec);# process a web order   my ($order_time, $monk, $itemname, $quantity, $ignore) =       unpack( "l i a32 s2", $rec );print "Order time: ",scalar localtime($order_time),"\n";print "Placed by monk #$monk for $quantity $itemname\n";# string formats$rec = pack('a8',"hello");               # should produce 'hello\0\0\0'DumpString($rec);$rec = pack('Z8',"hello");               # should produce 'hello\0\0\0'DumpString($rec);$rec = pack('A8',"hello");               # should produce 'hello   'DumpString($rec);($rec) = unpack('a8',"hello\0\0\0");     # should produce 'hello\0\0\0'DumpString($rec);($rec) = unpack('Z8',"hello\0\0\0");     # should produce 'hello'DumpString($rec);($rec) = unpack('A8',"hello   ");        # should produce 'hello'DumpString($rec);($rec) = unpack('A8',"hello\0\0\0");     # should produce 'hello'DumpString($rec);# bit format$rec = pack('b8',"00100110");            # should produce 0x64 (100)DumpString($rec);$rec = pack('B8',"00100110");            # should produce 0x26 (38)DumpString($rec);# hex format$rec = pack('h4',"1234");                # should produce 0x21,0x43DumpString($rec);$rec = pack('H4',"1234");                # should produce 0x12,0x34DumpString($rec);
-- 
David Serrano


On How To Answer (shmem)
Hello fellow monks,just curious... found node 196851 because I was asking myself something similar.Not because of XP, mind you, that's just fun and imho the best way to ensurefeedback, but because of the quality of answers. Now, this node is some years old;time to raise the question again. Or has it been yet? afaik there was no poll about it...
Depending on how this proposal is voted, I'd compile a non-FAQ entry for the FAQ on how to answer(It's just wonderful to browse this site.)See shmem's scratchpad for a draft; obvious things? are there not so obvious? (I keep it there because I want to be able to delete it if this one gets lots of xp-- ;-)
Would you provide node links for good/bad examples? (but not mine, I know them :)
cheers,
--shmem
_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q/)Oo.  G\        /                              /\_/(q    /----------------------------  \__(m.====.(_("always off the crowd"))."");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}


Bringing Votes to the Table (ghettofinger)
Hello Monks,I have been wondering for quite a while how voting on nodes works within the site. More specifically, how and where are the nodes that a user has voted on stored? Are they within a table that deals with users, or within the table that regards the node itself, or some other table?
 I appreciate your help,
ghettofinger


Message Inbox nit (hv)
There is one message in my inbox. I select the 'reply' radio button for it, fill in my reply text and hit 'Send'. Message is sent, page returns. I still have the message in front of me, and my reply text is still in the reply text box.
Normally at this point I would "'Move' (all but) selected to (deleted)", but I hit the 'reply' radio button again by mistake, and couldn't deselect.
So I didn't check '(all but)', and chose only "'Move' selected to (deleted)".
The selected message was deleted, but it also gave the warning message "Whoa Cowboy! You said that already. Don't 'reload'?".
This warning was inappropriate: the submit button for the form was "Move", not "Send". It might be a bug rather than just a nit if it would have sent my reply text but for the repeat.
Hugo

Formato	Descripcin
c,C	Un valor de tipo `char` con signo o sin l (entero de 8 bits).
s,S	Un valor de tipo `short` con signo o sin l, siempre de 16 bits.
l,L	Un valor de tipo `long`, siempre de 32 bits.
q,Q	Un valor de tipo `quad` (entero de 64 bits).
i,I	Un valor entero con signo o sin l, en el formato nativo de la mquina actual.
n,N	Un valor de 16 32 bits con orden "de red" (big-endian).
v,V	Un valor de 16 32 bits con orden "VAX" (little-endian).

Formato	Descripcin
a,A	Una cadena rellena con caracteres nulos/espacios.
b,B	Una cadena de bits (binaria) con rdenes de bits ascendiente o descendiente.
h,H	Una cadena hexadecimal, con el nybble alto o bajo primero.
Z	Una cadena terminada con un carcter nulo.

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Tutorial de pack/unpack

Por qu se necesitan pack y unpack

Formatos enteros

Formatos de caracteres

La funcin pack de Perl

La funcin unpack de Perl

Formatos enterosa.k.a. por qu tantos tipos?

Formatos de cadenas

Los formatos a, A y Z

Ejemplos

Los formatos b y B

Ejemplos

Los formatos h y H

Ejemplos

Informacin adicional

Referencias

Ejemplo

On How To Answer (shmem)

Bringing Votes to the Table (ghettofinger)

How 'bout a
(and other stuff) warning? (blazar)

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`Example:`

Por qu se necesitan `pack` y `unpack`

La funcin `pack` de Perl

La funcin `unpack` de Perl

Formatos enteros
a.k.a. por qu tantos tipos?

Los formatos `a`, `A` y `Z`

Los formatos `b` y `B`

Los formatos `h` y `H`