This script checks select pages on some popular review sites for the latest review, and writes the date of the most recent review from each site to a file. Each time it is run, it checks against the previous results and sends an email notification with the date and link to page(s) with fresh reviews.

"mailx" was used to send email. I suspect that this may not be available in Windows, I tested only on Mac OS X and Ubuntu.

The following script has the pages hard-coded, as it was written for my school. Those pages (and your email addresses) could easily be replaced to suit your requirements.

I found "The 10-minute XPath Tutorial" ("Automating System Administration with Perl, 2nd ed.) very helpful in understanding XPath. Thanks also to the help of fellow perl monks!

By the way, "EB" and "MA" are shorthand for two separate campuses within our school.

Update 2014-07-28 - I ran perlcritic and fixed some potential problems

#!/usr/bin/env perl 

use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use Text::CSV;
use Carp;
use LWP::Simple qw(get);
use Text::Unidecode qw(unidecode);
use HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath;

# Email Settings
my %email = (
    to      => 'me@example.com,you@example.com',
    subject => 'New ECDS reviews found'
);

# Reviews subroutine and URLs to check
my $review_sites = [
    {
        site         => 'Yelp',
        sub          => \&yelp_checker,
        review_pages => {
            'EB' =>
'http://www.yelp.com/biz/encinitas-country-day-school-encinitas?sort_b
+y=date_desc',
            'MA' =>
'http://www.yelp.com/biz/encinitas-country-day-school-encinitas-2?sort
+_by=date_desc'
        }
    },
    {
        site         => 'GreatSchools',
        sub          => \&gs_checker,
        review_pages => {
            'MA' =>
'http://www.greatschools.org/california/encinitas/9670-Encinitas-Count
+ry-Day-School/?tab=reviews'
        }
    },
    {
        site         => 'PrivateSchoolReview',
        sub          => \&psr_checker,
        review_pages => {
            'MA' =>
              'http://www.privateschoolreview.com/school_ov/school_id/
+2039'
        }
    },
    {
        site         => 'Kudzu',
        sub          => \&kudzu_checker,
        review_pages => {
            'MA' =>
              'http://www.kudzu.com/m/Encinitas-Country-Day-School-135
+71675'
        }
    },
    {
        site         => 'MerchantCircle',
        sub          => \&mc_checker,
        review_pages => {
            'MA' =>
'http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Encinitas.Country.Day.School.7
+60-942-1111?sort=created&dir=desc'
        }
    }
];

# Default date if no record
my $default_date = '00-00-0000';

# Month name to number conversion
my %month = (
    January   => '01',
    February  => '02',
    March     => '03',
    April     => '04',
    May       => '05',
    June      => '06',
    July      => '07',
    August    => '08',
    September => '09',
    October   => '10',
    November  => '11',
    December  => '12'
);

# Where is the reviews file?
my $reviews_filepath = "reviews.txt";

# Where is the alert message file?
my $msg_filepath = "msg.txt";

# Slurp hash from reviews file
my $old_reviews = hash_from_csv($reviews_filepath);

my %new_reviews;

# Iterate through each site
for my $review_site (@$review_sites) {
    my $pages = $review_site->{review_pages};

    # iterate through each campus html and collect xpath nodes
    while ( my ( $campus, $url ) = each %$pages ) {
        my $html = get $url or croak("Can't reach $url $!\n");
        $html =~ s/([^[:ascii:]]+)/unidecode($1)/ge;
        my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath->new;
        $tree->parse($html) or croak("Parse failed: $!\n");
        my ($date) = $review_site->{'sub'}->($tree);

        # create hash keys from campus and review site names
        my $campus_site = $campus . '_' . $$review_site{'site'};
        push( @{ $new_reviews{$campus_site} }, $date );
        push( @{ $new_reviews{$campus_site} }, $url );
    }
}

# Write message if new reviews
my $msg = '';
while ( my ( $item, $data ) = each %new_reviews ) {
    unless ( $$old_reviews{$item}[0] eq $$data[0] ) {
        $msg .= "New review on $$data[0]: \n    $$data[1]\n";
    }
}

# Save message.
open my $fh, ">:encoding(utf8)", "$msg_filepath"
  or croak("cannot open $msg_filepath: $!");
print {$fh} $msg or croak("Can't print message:\n$msg\n$!");
close $fh;

# Write new review data to file.
hash_to_csv( \%new_reviews, $reviews_filepath );

# Email message if exists
send_email($msg) if length($msg);

######## SUBROUTINES #######

# import old data from file
sub hash_from_csv {
    my $filepath = shift;
    open my $fh, "<:encoding(utf8)", "$filepath"
      or croak("cannot open  $filepath: $!");
    my $csv = Text::CSV->new( { binary => 1 } );
    my %hash;
    map { $hash{ shift @{$_} } = $_ } @{ $csv->getline_all($fh) };
    close $fh;
    return \%hash;
}

# write new data to file
sub hash_to_csv {
    my ( $hash, $filepath ) = @_;
    open my $fh, ">:encoding(utf8)", "$filepath"
      or croak("cannot open  $filepath: $!");
    my $csv = Text::CSV->new( { binary => 1, eol => "\n" } );
    for ( keys %$hash ) {
        my $colref = [ $_, $$hash{$_}->[0] ];
        $csv->print( $fh, $colref );
    }
    close $fh;
    return;
}

# send email notifications
sub send_email {
    my ($body) = @_;
    open my $pipe, '|-', '/usr/bin/mailx', '-s', $email{subject}, $ema
+il{to}
      or croak("can't open pipe to mailx: $!\n");

    print $pipe $body;
    close $pipe;
    croak("mailx exited with a non-zero status: $?\n") if $?;
    return;
}

# extract date of most recent review from GreatSchools tree
sub gs_checker {
    my $tree = shift;
    my $xpath =
'//div[contains(@class,"media mbs")]/div[(@class="author small make-99
+9999 fl pbn mbn")]';
    my $dates = $tree->findnodes($xpath);

    # dates returned as 'month dd, yyyy'
    my $date;
    $date = $$dates[0]->as_trimmed_text() if ( $$dates[0] );
    if ( $date =~ /(\w{3,9})\s+(\d{1,2}),\s+(\d{4})/ ) {
        $date = $3 . '-' . $month{$1} . '-' . $2;
    }
    return ( $date || $default_date );
}

# extract date of most recent review from Yelp tree
sub yelp_checker {
    my $tree  = shift;
    my $xpath = '//meta[@itemprop="datePublished"][1]';
    my $dates = $tree->findnodes($xpath);
    # dates returned as 'yyyy-mm-dd'
    if ( $$dates[0] ) {
        return $$dates[0]->attr('content');
    }
    else {
        return ( $$dates[0] || $default_date );
    }
}

# extract date of most recent review from PrivateSchoolReview tree
sub psr_checker {
    my $tree  = shift;
    my $xpath = '//meta[@itemprop="datePublished"][1]';
    my $dates = $tree->findnodes($xpath);

    # dates returned as 'yyyy-mm-dd'
    if ( $$dates[0] ) {
        return $$dates[0]->attr('content');
    }
    else {
        return ( $$dates[0] || $default_date );
    }
}

# extract date of most recent review from Kudzu tree
sub kudzu_checker {
    my $tree  = shift;
    my $xpath = '//div[@class="review_post_date"]/p/span[@class="rp-da
+te"]';
    my $dates = $tree->findnodes($xpath);

    # date returned as 'mm/dd/yyyy'
    my $date;
    $date = $$dates[0]->as_trimmed_text() if ( $$dates[0] );
    if ( $date =~ /(\d{1,2})\/(\d{1,2})\/(\d{4})/ ) {
        $date = $3 . '-' . $1 . '-' . $2;
    }
    return ( $date || $default_date );
}

# extract date of most recent review from MerchantCircle tree
sub mc_checker {
    my $tree  = shift;
    my $xpath = '//span[@itemprop="datePublished"][1]';
    my $dates = $tree->findnodes($xpath);

    # dates returned as 'Month dd, yyyy at hh:mm PM'
    my $date;
    $date = $$dates[0]->as_trimmed_text() if ( $$dates[0] );
    if ( $date =~
        /\s*(\w{3,9})\s*(\d{1,2})\s*\,\s*(\d{4})\s+at\s+\d{1,2}\:\d{2}
+\s+[AP]M/
      )
    {
        $date = $3 . '-' . $month{$1} . '-' . $2;
    }
    return ( $date || $default_date );
}
[download]

The other day I got a new laptop and tried to run a couple scripts on it. I quickly grew tired of the tedious cycle of 'Module::X not found' errors/installing Module::X. I decided to make a tool to improve the situation.

The result, Module::Extract::Install, can be used to analyze perl scripts and modules to identify and install their dependencies in an automated, pain-free manner. You can use this module's methods to write your own script (e.g., to pipe missing modules to your favorite installer) or take advantage of the included command-line tools cpanm-missing (checks a list of Perl files) and cpanm-missing-deep (checks all the Perl files within a directory).

Feel free to give me last minute comments/suggestions before I put it on CPAN (currently it is only available through GitHub). Thanks!

Dear Monks,

I have stayed away from using shared memory because of the statement: "This function is available only on machines supporting System V IPC." in the documentation for use. I decided I had a good use and did a Super Search and found zentara's excellent work which I used as a starting point for this discussion. I re-read the documentation and looked at the books 'Programming Perl' and the 'Perl Cookbook', and wondered if I could do something similar with a RAM disk and not have a dependency on System V IPC support. So taking the code provided by zentara, and using it as a benchmark for my requirements, I started testing on a 8GB RAM disk on a Debian 64bit Linux box using a 32-bit 5.14.2 Perl. I found that I could get approximately 216K System V IPC writes per second(wps). WOW!

Since I only needed 20-25K writes per second, I started working on my "shared memory look-alike". What I found was that I could do better than 349K wps. Actually the 1st run produced 800K wps, but I realized I didn't follow the format of zentara's script, so I modified the script to call a subroutine, flock the file, test return codes, etc. Currently, 349K wps is the worse case on a RAM disk, 291K wps on a 7,200 rpm hard disk, and 221K wps on a 5,400 rpm disk. (Note: I didn't have a SSD on the test system.) The code follows, and if I did something to make my numbers look better, I'd like to know.

Update: Do not use this code as it mixes buffered and unbuffered I/O. See later for a sample that I believe works correctly!

#######  shmem-init.pl  ############################
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Time::HiRes qw( gettimeofday usleep );
use Fcntl qw( :DEFAULT :flock );            ## Part of core perl
use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_STAT IPC_PRIVATE IPC_CREAT IPC_EXCL S_IRUSR S_IWU
+SR IPC_RMID);

# see "perldoc perlfunc /shmget" and "perldoc perlipc /SysV" 
# big difference from c is attach and detach is automatic in Perl 
# it attaches to read or write, then detaches 

my $go = 1;
$SIG{INT} = sub{ $go = 0;
                &close_m();   #close up the shared mem 
                exit;
                };

    my $segment_hbytes = 0x640;   # hex bytes, a multiple of 4k 
    my ($segment_id, $segment_size) = &init_m($segment_hbytes);
    print "shmid-> $segment_id\tsize-> $segment_size\n";

                                               #         Counter  Elap
+sed time      Writes/second
                                               #         -------------
+----------------------------
    my $stime = gettimeofday; my $i = 0;       # Result: 2000000  9.27
+134203910828  215718/second
    while($go)
    {    &write_m($i);
       $i++;
        if ( $i >= 2_000_000 )
        {   $stime = gettimeofday - $stime; my $rpm = int( 2_000_000 /
+ $stime );
            print "$i\t$stime\t$rpm/second\n\n"; last;
        }
       #select(undef,undef,undef,.001); 
       last if ! $go;
   }

    our $indexdb;
                                                #         Counter  Ela
+psed time      Writes/second
                                                #         ------------
+-----------------------------
   my $file = "/dev/shm/FlexBase/__env.index";  # Result: 2000000  5.7
+3024797439575  349025/second
#  my $file = "/__env.index";                   # Result: 2000000  6.8
+8051080703735  290676/second
#  my $file = "/flexvault/__env.index";         # Result: 2000000  9.0
+2671384811401  221564/second

    open( $indexdb,"+<", $file ) or die "Not open: $!";

    $stime = gettimeofday; $i = 0;
    while( 1 )
    {   &write_mem($i);
        $i++;
        if ( $i >= 2_000_000 )
        {   $stime = gettimeofday - $stime; my $rpm = int( 2_000_000 /
+ $stime );
            print "$i\t$stime\t$rpm/second\n"; last;
        }
    }
    close $indexdb;

exit;

sub write_mem()
{   our $indexdb;
    # Write a string to the shared file. 
    my $message = shift;
    if ( flock( $indexdb, LOCK_EX ) )
    {   my $ret = sysseek( $indexdb, 0, 0); # move to beginning of fil
+e
        if ( ! defined $ret ) {    die "O04. sysseek failed: $!"; }
        $ret = syswrite ( $indexdb, $i, length($i) );
        if ( $ret != length($i) ) { die "O05. syswrite failed! $!"; }
    }
##
##  Make test ( 1==1 ) to verify syswrite worked correctly.
##  Make test ( 1==2 ) to test speed of syswrite to filesystem.
##
    if ( ( 1==2 )&&( flock( $indexdb, LOCK_SH ) ) )
    {   my $ret = sysseek( $indexdb, 0, 0); # move to beginning of fil
+e
        if ( ! defined $ret ) {    die "O06. sysseek failed: $!"; }
        $ret = sysread ( $indexdb, my $ni, length($i) );
        if ( $ni != $i ) { die "O07. |$ni|$i| $!"; }
    }
   return 0;
}

################################################################# 
sub init_m(){

 my $segment_hbytes = shift;

# Allocate a shared memory segment.  
  my $segment_id = shmget (IPC_PRIVATE, $segment_hbytes,
                       IPC_CREAT | IPC_EXCL | S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR);

# Verify the segment's size. 
  my $shmbuffer = '';
  shmctl ($segment_id, IPC_STAT, $shmbuffer);
  my @mdata = unpack("i*",$shmbuffer);  #not sure if that is right unp
+ack? works :-) 
return($segment_id, $mdata[9] );
}

sub write_m() {
   # Write a string to the shared memory segment. 
   my $message = shift;
   shmwrite($segment_id, $message, 0, $segment_size) || die "$!";
   #the 0, $segment_size can be broke up into substrings like 0,60 
   # or 61,195, etc 
   return 0;
  }


sub close_m(){
 # Deallocate the shared memory segment. 
  shmctl ($segment_id, IPC_RMID, 0);
  return 0;
}

1;

__END__
[download]

Regards...Ed

Inspired by How to transmit text to Yahoo Content Analysis. Not sure how complete or correct it is, just threw it together for fun. Seems to work and I’ll make amendments as necessary or sanely suggested.

Requires: strictures, LWP::UserAgent, Getopt::Long, Pod::Usage, Path::Tiny.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use 5.010;
use strictures;
no warnings "uninitialized";
use LWP::UserAgent;
use Getopt::Long;
use Pod::Usage;
use open qw( :encoding(UTF-8) :std );
use Path::Tiny;

# use XML::LibXML; # For expansion... or XML::Rabbit

my $service = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql";
my %opt = ( text => undef,
            url  => undef,
            max  => 100 );

# These are, luckily, false by default for Yahoo, so we only care abou
+t true.
my %boolean = map {; $_ => 1 }
    qw/ related_entities show_metadata enable_categorizer /;

# What we compose to query, e.g. not "verbose" or "file."
my %sql = ( %opt, %boolean );

my $ok = GetOptions( \%opt,
                     "text=s", "file=s", "url=s", "max=i",
                     "verbose", "help", keys %boolean );

pod2usage( -verbose => 0,
           -exitval => 1,
           -message => "Options were not recognized." )
    unless $ok;

pod2usage( -verbose => 2 ) if $opt{help};

pod2usage( -verbose => 0,
           -exitval => 1,
           -message => "One of these, at most, allowed: text, url, fil
+e." )
    if 1 < grep defined, @opt{qw/ text url file /};

# Only one, text|file, is allowed by Getopt::Long.
$opt{text} ||= path($opt{file})->slurp if $opt{file};

unless ( $opt{url} || $opt{text} ) # Accept from STDIN.
{
    say "Type away. ^D to execute (on *nix anyway).";
    chomp( my @input = <> );
    $opt{text} = join " ", @input;
    die "Give some input!\n" unless $opt{text} =~ /\w/;
}

my @where;
for my $key ( keys %opt )
{
    next unless defined $opt{$key} and exists $sql{$key};
    $opt{$key} = "true" if $boolean{$key};
    $opt{$key} =~ s/([\\"'\0])/\\$1/g;
    push @where, sprintf "%s = '%s'", $key, $opt{$key};
}

my $q = sprintf "SELECT * FROM contentanalysis.analyze WHERE %s",
    join " AND ", @where;

say "SQL >> $q\n" if $opt{verbose};

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $response = $ua->post( $service, [ q => $q ] );

say $response->request->as_string if $opt{verbose};

say $opt{verbose} ?
    $response->as_string : $response->decoded_content();

exit ! $response->is_success;

__END__

=pod

=encoding utf8

=head1 Name

yahoo-content-analyzer - command-line to query it.

=head1 Synopsis

 yahoo-content-analyzer -text "Perl is a programming language."

    -text "{command line string}"
    -file (slurp and submit as text)
    -url
    -max [100 is default]
    -related_entities
    -show_metadata
    -enable_categorizer
    -verbose
    -help

=head1 Description

L<https://developer.yahoo.com/search/content/V2/contentAnalysis.html>

=head1 Code Repository

L<http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1094394>

=head1 See Also

L<https://metacpan.org/search?q=YQL>.

=head1 Author and License

Your Mother, L<http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=248054>. You may
redistribute and modify this code under the same terms as Perl itself.

=head1 Disclaimer of Warranty

No warranty. No means no.

=cut
[download]

Updates/Changelog

• Removed URI, only first draft used it.

If you want to experiment on your own machine, Proftd works good when configured with --enable-tls, you can google for instructions.

I used a little eval trick to pass the commands into the pty.

Some common commands : list pwd cwd noop nlst mkdir('foo') rmdir('foo') put('somelocalfile', 'remotefile')

The method set that comes with Net::FTPSSL is simple and easy.

ftps-z: runs standalone or thru a pty as shown below

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::FTPSSL;

my $server = "127.0.0.1";
my $username = "someuser";
my $passwd = "somepass";

my @ret;

my $ftps = Net::FTPSSL->new($server,
                            Encryption => EXP_CRYPT,
                            Debug => 1,
                           # Croak => 1,
                         )
     or die "Can't open $server\n$Net::FTPSSL::ERRSTR";

$ftps->login($username, $passwd)
    or error("Credential error, $ftps->last_message");

# get default listing and pwd
@ret = $ftps->list()
    or error("Command error, $ftps->last_message");

print "####################\n";
print join "\n", @ret,"\n";
print "####################\n";

# get default pwd
@ret = $ftps->pwd
    or error("Command error, $ftps->last_message");

print "####################\n";
print join "\n", @ret,"\n";
print "####################\n";

if( -t STDIN ) { print "tty\n"; }

while(1){
  print "Hit Control-C to exit ... otherwise:\n";
  print "Enter command: \n";
   my $com = <STDIN>;
   chomp $com;
   if ($com =~ m/quit/){ print "exiting\n";}

    # needed this eval to get ftps methods to work with pty
    my @ret =  eval "\$ftps->$com";
       if($@) { print "@_\n"; }

print "####################\n";
print  join "\n", @ret,"\n";
print "####################\n";

if ($com =~ m/quit/){ print "exit command received, ftpssl exiting\n";
+ 
                      print "Control-C to exit pty, or Shift-PageUp to
+ view log\n";
                      last;
                      }
}

print "at end\n";
exit;
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Description: Fool a process into
# thinking that STDOUT is a terminal, when in fact
# basic PTY code from etcshadow
use warnings;
use strict; 
use IO::Pty; 

$SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE'; # for when we quit the ftpssl session

my $pty = IO::Pty->new; 
my $slave = $pty->slave;
open TTY,"/dev/tty" or die "not connected to a terminal\n"; 
$pty->clone_winsize_from(\*TTY);
close TTY;

my $pid = fork(); die "bad fork: $!\n" unless defined $pid; 
  if (!$pid) {
  
    open STDOUT,">&=".$pty->fileno() or die $!;
  
    exec "./ftps-z";

}else{
  $pty->close();
     while (defined (my $line = <$slave>)) {
       print $line;
     }
}

while(1){
  my $command = <>;
  print $slave "$command\n";
}

[download]

So Ovid made this blog post that gave an example of editing Perl in Vim -- when you move your cursor over a Perl variable it is highlighted in the rest of the document automatically. Quite handy.

Paul Johnson then made some improvements and put the code in a Git repo so that it's very easy to install with Pathogen in Vim

After cloning that repo into your Pathogen bundle directory, it pretty much just works as advertised. For some reason it does not work with Tim Popes "vim-sensible" plugin however.

The highlighting is delayed until you haven't moved your cursor for the number of milliseconds set in the Vim "updatetime" variable. By default this is set to 4000 which is pretty slow. Doing "set ut=50" in your vimrc makes it much snappier.

Enjoy.

P.S. Anyone have an updated syntax file for 5.20.0 sub-signatures and other new features?

Spent a bit longer on this than needs be with hindsight, so I figure i'd share the product of that time

Music stack doesn't have much in the way of an API, instead it requires manual navigation to upload change files. The change file also has an enormous amount of saved customisations on the upload form which would be numbingly tedious to fill out manually in the $mech itself

So! here's a short and effective means of putting inventory files up on Music Stack, using WWW::Mechanize to navigate from the login screen to the upload screen.

    use WWW::Mechanize;

    my $username = 'x@example.com'; 
    my $password = 'mypw';
    my $upfile = '/path/to/additions.csv';
    my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new() or die $!;
    $mech->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new());
    
    $mech->get(q#http://www.musicstack.com/login.cgi#) or die $!;
    #need to use sequential identifiers when forms are either nameless
+ or share the same name
    $mech->form_number(3);
    $mech->field ('user' => $username);
    $mech->field ('pw' => $password);
    $mech->click_button(name => "login");
    #now on the user account page

    $mech->follow_link( text => 'Upload' );#case sensitive
    
    #now on the inventory management page
    $mech->form_name('form'); # 2 forms on page - other is 'search'
    # 3 options here - add is incremental 
    $mech->set_fields('delete' => 'add');
    $mech->field('upfile' => $upfile );
    $mech->click_button(value => 'Upload File');
    #the file is uploaded and the status screen displayed here 
    
    print $mech-> content(); 

[download]

       Dedicated to my father who studied the other Tartaglia

I put the following together to scrape experience, level and writeups off my profile page and store it in a text file on my computer, to record my progress through the Monastery. A scheduled task runs this once a day.

use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP::Simple;
use URI::URL;

my $date=`ECHO %DATE:~10,4%%DATE:~4,2%%DATE:~7,2%`; # YYYYMMDD

my $url = url('http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=844862');

my $content = get($url);
$content =~ s/\cJ//g;
$content =~ s/\cM//g;

my ($experience, $level, $posts) =
   ($content =~ /Experience:\D+(\d+).+
                 Level:.+([A-Z][a-z]+\s+\(\d+\)).+
                 Writeups:.+>(\d+)</x);

open my $ofh, '>>','perl_xp.dat';
printf $ofh "%d,%d,%d,%s\n",$date,$experience,$posts,$level;
close($ofh);
[download]

There is probably a way to do this in Javascript that could be included in the Free Nodelet, but that's beyond my skill level.

Update

Improved version here.

I heard that every real programmer has a Snoopy Calendar dated from 1969. Because Fortran felt slightly uncomfortable for me, I decided to make own version with Perl. In my country first day of week is Monday. You can modify the zeller function if this is a question. This is not obfuscated code, but this code is not written as clearly as possible. Since this code requires some data, at bottom of message there is a link to .tar.bz2. Have fun.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Copyleft Timo Poikola

use strict;

my %N;
$N{0} = " 000 0   00   00   0 000 ";
$N{1} = "  1   11    1    1  11111";
$N{2} = " 222 2   2   2  2   22222";
$N{3} = "33333    3  33 3   3 333 "; 
$N{4} = "   4   44  4 4 44444   4 "; 
$N{5} = "555555    5555     55555 ";
$N{6} = " 666 6    6666 6   6 666 ";
$N{7} = "77777    7   7   7    7  ";
$N{8} = " 888 8   8 888 8   8 888 ";  
$N{9} = " 999 9   9 9999    9 999 ";
$N{_} = "                         ";

my @t = localtime(time);
my $a = defined $ARGV[0]? $ARGV[0] : $t[5]+1900;
my @dim = (undef,31,28,31,30,31,30,31,31,30,31,30,31);

sub pn {
  my $n = shift;
  my $r = shift;
  if ($n eq "I") {
    print " I  ";
  } else {
    print " ";
    print substr $N{$n},5*$r,5;
    print " ";
  }
  return $n;
}

sub zeller {
  use integer;
  my $month = shift;
  my $day = shift;
  my $year = shift;
  my $aa = (14 - $month) / 12;
  my $y = $year - $aa;
  my $m = $month + 12*$aa - 2;
  1+(--$day + $y + $y/4 - $y/100 + $y/400 + (31*$m)/12) %7;
}

sub lightyear {
  my $ly = shift;
  return 1 if  (0 == $ly % 4 and 0 != $ly % 100 or 0 == $ly % 400);
  return 0;
}

my $text = do { local( @ARGV, $/ ) = "snpdat.txt" ; <> } ;

my @str = split //, do {local (@ARGV, $/ ) = "data.txt" ; <> } ;
my $ascii = "";
for my $i (0..scalar(@str)/2-1) {
  $ascii .= $str[2*$i + 1] x unpack("C", $str[2*$i]);
}
my @art = split(/1/, $ascii);

my $d="DAY";

sub label {
  my $z = shift;
  $z--;
  substr $text, $z*553,553;
}

$dim[2]++ if lightyear($a);

for my $cnt (1..13) {
  my $aux;
  my $aux2;
  my $s;
  my $mm = $cnt;
  if ($cnt == 13) {
    $a++;
    $mm = 1;
  }
  $aux = zeller($mm,1,$a);
  if ($aux > 1) {
    if ($aux >= 3) {
      $aux--;
      $s .= "__I"x$aux;
    }
    else {
      $s .= "__I";
    }
  }
  for $aux (1..$dim[$mm]) {
    if ($aux < 10) {
      $s .="_";
    }
    $s .= $aux;
    if ((zeller($mm,$aux,$a) == 7) && ($aux < $dim[$mm])) {
      $s .= "\n";
    } elsif ((zeller($mm,$aux,$a) == 7) && ($aux == $dim[$mm])) {
      $s .= " ";
    } else {
      $s .= "I";
    }
    if (($aux == $dim[$mm]) && (zeller($mm,$aux,$a)) < 7) {
    $aux2 = 7-zeller($mm,$aux,$a);
      if ($aux2 == 1) {
        $s .= "__";
      }
      else {
        $s .= "__I"x($aux2-1);
      }
    }
  }

  my @arr = split(/\n/, $s);

  my @l = split(/\n/, label($mm));
  print @art[$cnt],"\n\n";

  $a =~ /(.)(.)(.)(.)/;
  print" "x8;pn($2,0);print" "x13,$l[0]," "x13;pn($3,0);print "\n";
  print" "x8;pn($2,1);print" "x13,$l[1]," "x13;pn($3,1);print "\n";
  print" ";pn($1,0);pn($2,2);print" "x13,$l[2]," "x13;pn($3,2);pn($4,0
+);print"\n";
  print" ";pn($1,1);pn($2,3);print" "x13,$l[3]," "x13;pn($3,3);pn($4,1
+);print"\n";
  print" ";pn($1,2);pn($2,4);print" "x13,$l[4]," "x13;pn($3,4);pn($4,2
+);print"\n";
  print" ";pn($1,3);print" "x20,$l[5]," "x20;pn($4,3);print "\n";
  print" ";pn($1,4);print" "x20,$l[6]," "x20;pn($4,4);print "\n\n";


  print " "x9,"MON$d"," "x12,"TUES$d"," "x10,"WEDNES$d"," "x9,"THURS$d
+"," "x11,"FRI$d"," "x11,"SATUR$d"," "x10,"SUN$d\n";
  for (@arr) {
    print " "," "x20,"I","                 I"x5," "x20,"\n";
    for my $x (0..4) {
      print "      ";s/(.)/pn($1,$x)/eg;print"\n";
    }
    print " "," "x20,"I","                 I"x5," "x20,"\n";
    print " ","-"x20,"I","-----------------I"x5,"-"x20,"\n";
  }
  print "\n\n";
}
[download]

Hello, everyone.

Please permit my incorrect or poor english.

I saw many Indicator Applet for Ubuntu Unity. Almost all Applet-s are made by Python. I do not see Applet by perl, yet. So, i made Indicator Applet by Gtk2-perl of Launcher.

These are a program and a need file. Please refer for details: http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~toskanosu/

#! /usr/bin/perl
#
# Copyright 2014 toskanosu (2014.04.23-05.01 run-perl.pl as /usr/local
+/bin/run-perl)
# (This is a perl Indicator Applet) (ubuntu Unity libappindicator)
#
# AUTO menu update is not implemented for Run_Any_File modified, but m
+anualy.
#
use strict; use warnings;
use Gtk2 '-init';
use Glib qw/TRUE FALSE/;
use English; use utf8; use Encode; use Cwd;
use Gtk2::AppIndicator; # libgtk2-appindicator-perl installed by Synap
+tic
my $HOME=$ENV{"HOME"};
my $USER=$ENV{"USER"};
my $Run_Any_File = $HOME."/.run-any"; # you can change contents in thi
+s file.
my $Myself_Icon="/usr/share/ubuntu-tweak/pixmaps/emblem-ohno.png"; # y
+ou can change as you like.
my $White = Gtk2::Gdk::Color->new (0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF);
my $Red   = Gtk2::Gdk::Color->new (0xFFFF,0,0);
my (@Head,@Body,@Kind,$AppIndicator,$ImageMenuItem);
sub Trim { my $v = shift; $v =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/; return $v; }
sub Left { return substr($ARG[0],0,$ARG[1]); }
sub IsIt { return index($ARG[0],$ARG[1]) > -1 }
sub Make_About {
    my $AboutDialog=Gtk2::AboutDialog->new;
    $AboutDialog->set_program_name('run-perl');
    $AboutDialog->set_comments("Indicator Applet made by perl.\n".
                               "Menu Launcher mde by toskanosu.");
    $AboutDialog->set_website('http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~toskanosu/');
    $AboutDialog->signal_connect(response => sub { $AboutDialog->destr
+oy });
    $AboutDialog->show_all;
}
sub Get_Kind {
    my $Body=shift; return(0) if $Body eq '';
    my @Line1=split(/\./,$Body); my $Ex=lc($Line1[$#Line1]);
    my @Line2=split(/ /,$Body);
    if   ($Ex eq 'exe')                    { return 1 } # sh
    elsif($Ex eq 'pl')                     { return 2 } # perl
    elsif($Ex eq 'rb')                     { return 8 } # ruby
    elsif($Ex eq 'py')                     { return 3 } # python
    elsif($Ex eq 'sh')                     { return 4 } # sh
    elsif(Left($Body,4) eq 'http' || Left($Body,5) eq 'file:') {
                                             return 5 } # http or file
+:
    elsif(IsIt($Body,'/') && $#Line2 == 0) { return 6 } # dir
    else                                   { return 7 } # sh command
}
sub MenuItem_Clicked {
    my $Kind=$Kind[$ARG[1]]; return(TRUE) if $Kind == 0;
    my $Body=$Body[$ARG[1]];
    if   ($Kind == 2) { system("/usr/bin/perl ".$Body) }
    elsif($Kind == 8) { system("/usr/bin/ruby ".$Body) }
    elsif($Kind == 3) { system("/usr/bin/python ".$Body) }
    elsif($Kind == 5) { system("/usr/bin/xdg-open ".$Body) }
    elsif($Kind == 6) { system("/usr/bin/nautilus ".$Body) }
    else              { system("/bin/sh -c '".$Body."'") } # 1, 4, 7
    FALSE;
}
sub Set_Image {
    my $ImageMenuItem=shift; my $Stock_ID=shift;
    my $Image=Gtk2::Image->new;
    $Image->set_from_icon_name($Stock_ID,'menu'); # Get icon only!
    $ImageMenuItem->set_image($Image);
    $ImageMenuItem->set_always_show_image(TRUE); # Required!
}
sub Set_Icon {
    my $Menu=shift; my $Inx=shift; my $Stock_ID=shift;
    my $ImageMenuItem=Gtk2::ImageMenuItem->new($Head[$Inx]);
    Set_Image($ImageMenuItem,$Stock_ID);
    $ImageMenuItem->signal_connect("activate"=> \&MenuItem_Clicked, $I
+nx );
    $Menu->append($ImageMenuItem);
}
sub Set_My_Icon {
    my $Title=shift; my $Stock_ID=shift;
    $ImageMenuItem=Gtk2::ImageMenuItem->new($Title);
    my $Image=Gtk2::Image->new_from_stock($Stock_ID,'menu'); # Get ico
+n and title
    $ImageMenuItem->set_image($Image);
    $ImageMenuItem->set_always_show_image(TRUE);
}
sub Make_Menu {
    @Head=(); @Body=(); @Kind=(); # Initialize
    my $Menu=Gtk2::Menu->new; $AppIndicator->set_menu($Menu);
    open(File, $Run_Any_File) || die "no file: ".$Run_Any_File;
    while(<File>) {
        chomp($ARG);
        next if Left($ARG,1) eq '#'; # comment
        next if $ARG eq '';
        my @Line=split(/\|/,$ARG);
        my $Head=Trim($Line[0]);
        my $Body=$#Line >= 1 ? Trim($Line[1]) : "";
        $Body =~ s/\{HOME\}/$HOME/;
        $Body =~ s/\{USER\}/$USER/;
        push(@Head,decode_utf8($Head)); push(@Body,$Body); push(@Kind,
+Get_Kind($Body));
    }
    close(File);
    if($#Head > -1) {
        for (0..$#Head) {
            if   ($Kind[$ARG] == 1) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'application
+-x-executable')  } # exe
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 8) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'application
+-x-ruby') }        # ruby
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 2) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'application
+-x-perl') }        # perl
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 3) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'text-x-pyth
+on') }             # python
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 4) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'application
+-x-executable')  } # sh
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 5) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'text-html')
+ }                 # http
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 6) { #nautilus
                if   ($Body[$ARG] eq $HOME)          { Set_Icon($Menu,
+$ARG,'gtk-home') }
                elsif($Body[$ARG] eq 'computer:///') { Set_Icon($Menu,
+$ARG,'computer') }
                elsif($Body[$ARG] eq 'network:///')  { Set_Icon($Menu,
+$ARG,'folder-remote') }
                elsif($Body[$ARG] eq 'trash:///')    { Set_Icon($Menu,
+$ARG,'user-trash') }
                else                                 { Set_Icon($Menu,
+$ARG,'gtk-directory') }
            }
            elsif($Kind[$ARG] == 7) { Set_Icon($Menu,$ARG,'application
+-x-executable')  } # sh command
            elsif($Head[$ARG] eq '--TEAROFF--') {
                $Menu->append(Gtk2::TearoffMenuItem->new); # ---------
            }
            elsif($Head[$ARG] eq '--SEPARATOR--') {
                $Menu->append(Gtk2::SeparatorMenuItem->new);
            }
            else { # comment
                my $MenuItem=Gtk2::MenuItem->new($Head[$ARG]); $Menu->
+append($MenuItem);
            }
        }
    }
    $Menu->append(Gtk2::SeparatorMenuItem->new); # ---------
    Set_My_Icon('Refresh','gtk-refresh');
    $ImageMenuItem->signal_connect("activate"=> \&Make_Menu);
    $Menu->append($ImageMenuItem);
    Set_My_Icon('About','gtk-about');
    $ImageMenuItem->signal_connect("activate"=> \&Make_About);
    $Menu->append($ImageMenuItem);
    Set_My_Icon('Quit','gtk-quit');
    $ImageMenuItem->signal_connect("activate",sub { Gtk2->main_quit; }
+);
    $Menu->append($ImageMenuItem);
    $Menu->show_all();
}
$AppIndicator=Gtk2::AppIndicator->new("Perl_AppIndicator",$Myself_Icon
+);
$AppIndicator->set_icon_theme_path(getcwd());
Make_Menu();
$AppIndicator->set_active();
Gtk2->main; TRUE;
__END__
[download]

The following file includes a japanese kanji. Sorry.

#
# 1st column # is a comment line.
# This file is UTF-8 coding for Linux.
# Spec by toskanosu.
# This file is made in ~/.run-any
# PATH end by ".pl"        ==> start by perl
# PATH end by ".py"        ==> start by python
# PATH end by ".sh"        ==> start by sh (without STDIN)
# PATH end by ".exe"       ==> start by sh (for wine)
# PATH start by "http"     ==> start by xdg-open (URI)
# no PATH                  ==> menu displayed (comment)
# --SEPARATOR--            ==> Gtk2 separator (-------)
# PATH without slash       ==> start by sh (without STDIN)
# PATH include space       ==> start by sh (without STDIN)
# else                     ==> start by xdg-open (folder)
#
# {HOME} is changed to ~
# {USER} is changed to your user name
#
# ---LABEL----            |   ---PATH------
--------------- important ---------------
■ Paster                 |   {HOME}/perlsrc1/paster2sub.pl
Run GetTV (runner2)       |   {HOME}/perlsrc1/runner2.pl
GetRSS      　　          |   {HOME}/perlsrc1/getrssN1.pl
GetTV 1-day 　　          |   perl {HOME}/perlsrc1/gettv.p
+l 0
Run-Show            　    |   {HOME}/perlsrc1/runner3x.pl
geany  ~/.run-any         |   geany {HOME}/.run-any
geany  ~/MenuItem.linux   |   geany {HOME}/MenuItem.linux
--------------- Folder ---------------
コンピューター　      
+     |   computer:///
perlsrc1                  |   {HOME}/perlsrc1
pysrc                     |   {HOME}/pysrc
Toshi-HP                  |   {HOME}/toshi_hp
Free Icon                 |   {HOME}/Hozon1/free-png
ubuntu tweak png          |   /usr/share/ubuntu-tweak/pixmaps
--SEPARATOR--
--------------- exec ---------------
K-将棋                    |   wine /media/toshiaki/C-500GB
+/K-Shogi/K-Shogi.exe
Win用DLL等                |    winetricks
XPad                      |   xpad
nautilus restart          |   nautilus -q
world watch               |   gnome-clocks
--TEAROFF--
-------------- install--------------
Ubuntu Software Center    |   software-center
Synaptic Package Manager  |   synaptic-pkexec
--------------- setup ---------------
Set StartUp               |   gnome-session-properties
ubuntu-tweak              |   ubuntu-tweak
gnome-tweak-tool          |   gnome-tweak-tool
unity-tweak-tool          |   unity-tweak-tool
unsettings                |   unsettings
CompizConfig              |   ccsm
#EOF----------------------------------
[download]

I'm working on a stepper motor project with the Raspberry Pi and I needed to detect when an an optical mouse stops seeing motion. I'm using the mouse in place of an optical encoder to tell me when the stepper is stalled.

This code works on Raspbian with or without X. Since POSIX::read() waits for mouse events at first I thought I would have to use a second thread to poll somehow. Then I found the alarm function in "Programming Perl".

I found solutions for reading raw mouse data in Python but of course I wanted to do it in Perl. And I'm sharing it here so others can find it. (The oo Mouse module makes websearches for Perl related mouse projects difficult to find.)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use POSIX;
use Time::HiRes qw( ualarm );

### Detect if the mouse is moving or stopped. Tested on Raspian Linux.
### Adapted from http://www.the-ownage.com/?p=835
### The guy soldered a pair of wires to a mouse button 
### and used it to detect water leaks and send himself notifications.
my $fd;
my $buf;
my $mousedev="/dev/input/mouse0";

$fd = POSIX::open($mousedev, &POSIX::O_RDONLY) or die ("Cannot open $m
+ousedev: $!");

my $stopped = 1;
print time,"--Mouse is stopped--\n";

while( 1 ) {
    local $SIG{ALRM} = 
        sub { 
            print time,"--Mouse is stopped--\n" if ! $stopped; #on tra
+nsition
            $stopped = 1;    ### turn on output bit on Raspberry Pi
            $buf =""; 
        }; 
    ualarm 200_000;          ## time out after 0.2 seconds
    POSIX::read($fd, $buf, 1);
    if ( $buf and $stopped ) {
        print time,"--Mouse is moving--\n";     
        $stopped = 0;        ### turn off output
    }
    ualarm 0;
}
[download]

As a longtime dvorak user, I've occassionally noticed that it's extremely unbalanced left-right. The right hand, does almost all of the work.

A few times, I've tried using xmodmap to create a mirrored keyboard layout; but this didn't work well. Since my typing speed falls 10x, it's always faster to just leave the keyboard layout untouched.

Wasn't there some way to practice a new keyboard layout, without constantly running

setxkbmap -layout dvorak -option ctrl:nocaps; xmodmap new-layout;
setxkbmap -layout dvorak -option ctrl:nocaps; xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc 
[download]

So, wrote a perl script, to apply what-if-the-keyboard was a different layout transform to input.

That alone wouldn't be interesting enough to post. A trivial one-liner with s/./$map{$&} ? $map{$&} : $&/eg; is sufficient.

But, it was sorta clumsy to use. In a shell, a lot of keystrokes are necessary (up-arrow, backspace, backspace, backspace) to change the text. So, I eventually wrote a terminal ui for it, to make it easier to use.

The code

Dvorak keyboard users are rare, people who are trying to become left-handed are extremely rare. So, change $leftside and $rightside to something else, more meaningful.

Hi,

As an Storage Administrator who works on EMC Symmetrix Storage Array, many times, I have to extract a list of all the hosts connected to the storage array. This needs to be extracted by logging into the storage array and running a command like symmask -sid 12345 list logins, and then the hostnames are to be extracted from the list and stored in a text file. If hostnames are not reflecting, then the corresponding World Wide Name (WWN) of the Host HBA should be included in the list. To ensure dual or quadruple redunduncy, each host will show two paths or four paths, so the duplicates need to be removed and the host names need to be in Upper case. There are many such arrays, and a seperate file needs to be created for each of them.

Sometimes, the file has to be regenerated every few minutes due to some changes/requirements and the old file must be deleted, else wrong records will be captured. The script picks the array name from the command output stated earlier. This script is working fine on Redhat Linux 6.4 running Perl Version 5.10.1 and on Windows 2003 running Strawberry Perl version 5.18.2.2.

Hoping fellow EMC Administrators will find this script useful. Please note - I dont get to write scripts on a regular basis, so there's quite a lot of improvement that can be done with the script. If so, kindly let me know. Here's the script:

Here's the test file that's fed to the script. The actual file will have much more entries than what's given below.

And here is the output:

C:\Users\pmu\Documents\perl\work>perl hostnames.pl test_list_logins.tx
+t

Deleting existing "hostlist_hostnames.pl_000190101234.txt". A new one 
+will be created.

**********************************************************************
+*******************
Please Check the file - [ C:\Users\pmu\Documents\perl\work\hostlist_ho
+stnames.pl_000190101234.txt ].
NULLs are replaced with corresponding pWWNs.
**********************************************************************
+*******************

C:\Users\pmu\Documents\perl\work
[download]

And here's what the file - hostlist_hostnames.pl_000190101234.txt contains: