I'd like to have a text parser, like Perl CPAN Text::ParseWords,
that *only* breaks the text into words
- but which does not transform the words, handle escape characters, etc.

For example,
   Text::ParseWords::
      shellwords("a b 'c d' e")
returns
   a
   b
   c d
   e
i.e. it breaks the text up into words,
but it also transforms the words.

I would like to separate the breakup from the transformation:
   a
   b
   'c d'
   e

Note that if you ever encounter such a list whose words can themselves be further broken up,
then you know that it has been parsed by some tool after your original parser.

[[Category:Programming]] [[Categy::Text]]

Thumb drive as a webserver / NAS

I wish that I could find a flash drive that acted as a NAS.

Most USB flash drives are passive storage. Encryption is done by the OS you plug into.  Since I run Windows and various *IXes, and want to access my data from each, depending on a particular OS is a pain.

Booting an OS from the USB flash drive is better - but still not great, since it makes assumptions about the platform you are plugging in to. Typically, that it is a PC.

Flash drives have non-trivial processors in them.  Probably running Linux.  Why not make them a peer?

Issue: network interface.

I don't really want to add a typical Cat 5 ethernet connector - what is that, RJ45, 8P8C plug? - to the flash drive, neither in addition to nor replacing USB.

Q: I am sure there is a standard for networking over USB - but how ubiquitous is it?  I do not recall ever getting the option, when I plug in a USB flash drive, of connecting a webnrowser to a server running on tghe drive.

Gratuitous key position changes.

Was wondering why "search"  or "find" in Google chrome was broken.

Wasn't.  For the past week I was using a keyboard that was not my usual, with the keys in the lower left hand corner looking like Ctrl,Fn,...

Just switched back to what has been my usual keyboard for several months, with those keys swapped: Fn,Ctrl,...

It's funny how these trivial differences in devices are some of the most annoying.

Last time I shopped for keyboards, I bought 3 identical.  Not my favorite keyboard, but cheap enough that i could afford 3 of them.  Home, work, and Oceanside.

Yeah, yeah: remapping. Loses.

(The only good form of keyboard remapping is one that is downloaded into a PROM on the keyboard, so that it works in all modes, even before the OS boots.)

hg schemes extension

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/SchemesExtension

I like the idea of this extension, that allows you to create shortcuts for URLs you use often, e.g. cloning.

E.g.

[extensions]
hgext.schemes=

[schemes]
ups = ssh://my-uarch-performance-simulator/...

However, it is something of a no-sale when I saw that the URL was notexpanded in the clone:

> hg clone ups: u
...
> cd u
> hg paths
default = ups://
> 

Or in WorkDir/.hg/hgrc

[paths]
default = ups:

PRO: when the remote repository changges location, this *might* allow you to change the scheme URL shorthand in hgrc, and have things work in the possibly multiple clones you have outstanding.

CON: it loses some documentation. If I got run over by a beer truck, my replacement might have trouble finding where it was from.  Worse, if a repo was restored from backup (particularly if people keep branches as repos), and my home directory with the ~/.hgrc enabling SchemesExtension was  not present.

I'm not sure what I would like. Possibly always expand the shorthand.  Possibly record the shorthand with the long path as a comment:

[paths]
default = ups: # ssh://my-uarch-performance-simulator/...

> hg paths
default = ups:// # ssh://my-uarch-performance-simulator/...

TBD: move this to my wiki Category:VCS.

VirtualBoxen

Gave in, worn down... Installed VirtualBox, and Ubuntu in a virtual box, on my tablet PC running Windows 7.

Stream of  consciousness...

Recovering diverged home directory version control

I have long version controlled my home directory.  CVS. Git. Hg.

Unfortunately, they diverged.  Divergence happens naturally with CVS.  You have to work hard to get git and hg to diverge, but I did.

Now I want to merge the diverged home directories back together.  Preserving the history if possible, from the different VCS.  Sometimes just merging fikes.

==

Today: I want to start merging a diverged linux tree, from a flash drive, with my working tree (which started off on cygwin).

I created a new hg repo, created a branch on it, and then imported the tree to be merged.

I pulled/pushed this with my main home hg repo.  Had to use -f, to force unrelated repos to be together.

Now I have a single repo, with my current working (cygwin derived, homedir, and a not working linux homedir, on different branches.  The former n the default branch.

That's okay.  Not so bad.  A single history object(although I have kept separate working space trees.)

===

Now I want to merge, a file or a few files at a time.

E.g. copy the README from the linux branch to the default working derived from cygwin branch.


AAARGH!!!!  Hg doesn't handle partials... neither merges, not copies, nor...  Hg just plain really wants to lose track, not make doing this activity easy.

Missing X fonts

Like http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11544410, I was getting errors such as

Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct

(Except that I was getting the errors, not on a fresh Ubintu install, but when trying to use a fairly new machine at work, with what is probably a newer version of redHat.)

The post I quote fixed things by setting ~/.Xdefaultsto

emacs*font: 7x14

And then doing xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

On my end, I found that neither 7x14 nor courier worked.  But font "fixed" did.