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1
FEB
2012Test Driving an Algorithm (Part 1)
I want to take a look at some of the differences between Cowboy Coding and Test-Driven Development. To do that, let's solve a problem both ways and see what we can learn from the exercise.
A Puzzle
I needed some random problem to solve in this article and the PuzzleNode site is pretty handy for that. Two programmers I've been working with have recently experimented with problem number 11, Hitting Rock Bottom, so I am familiar with it. Let's use that.
You will probably want to read through the challenge before finishing this article. You may even want to try solving it yourself, just so you'll be more familiar with what I am doing here. The short, short story is that this problem is about simulating the flow of water into a cave for a fixed amount of time and then measuring the depth at each point. It doesn't take too long to solve.
Setup
Let's setup a project. I created a few directories and pulled down the data files given with the problem:
$ mkdir -p hitting_rock_bottom/{bin,data,lib,spec} $ cd hitting_rock_bottom/data/ $ for f in simple_cave.txt simple_out.txt complex_cave.txt > do > curl --silent -O \ > "http://puzzlenode.com/puzzles/11-hitting-rock-bottom/attachments/$f" > done $ cd .. -
13
OCT
2008The Secret Shell Helper
Someone pops onto the Ruby Talk mailing list fairly regularly asking how to break up content like:
one "two" "a longer three"They expect to end with a three element
Array, where the third item will contain spaces. They generally expect the quotes will have been removed as well.If your needs are very, very simple you may be able to handle this with a regular expression:
data = 'one "two" "a longer three"' p data.scan(/"([^"]*)"|(\S+)/).flatten.compact # >> ["one", "two", "a longer three"]
That just searches for either a set of quotes with some non-quote characters between them or a run of non-whitespace characters. Those are the two possibilities for the fields. Note that the two separate capture here mean
scan()will returns contents in the form:[[nil, "one"], ["two", nil], ["a longer three", nil]]
That's why I added a
flatten()andcompact()to get down to the actual matches.The regular expression approach can get pretty complex though if any kind of escaping for quotes is involved. When that happens, you may need to step up to a parser.
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24
JAN
2008From Bash to Z Shell
I work on multiple Unix platforms all day long. I had never really taken the time to learn about the shells, but I had picked up the basics over time. I knew how to run commands, string them together with pipes, and redirect their output into files. So when I tell you that I started learning new things in the first chapter of From Bash to Z Shell, you will know the coverage is in depth. If you are a casual shell user, or even less experienced, this book has a lot to offer you.
From Bash to Z Shell is organized into three parts. Part one is an introduction to shell basics. It focuses on typical interactions with a shell including all of the things I mentioned knowing before reading this book. There is surprisingly good depth even here though and I doubt that anyone short of a power user could make it through this section without picking up a new trick or two. I learned multiple things from each chapter in this section.
In part two, each chapter takes a single aspect of the shells and really focuses in on just that. You will find chapters about the startup files each shell invokes as well as shell command histories. This is comprehensive coverage that really gets you to understand how things work as well as how to tune them to your personal tastes. You are even less likely to not pickup great tips in here.
