This neat little algorithm takes a number of sorted files and merges them together to a sorted file. It uses fixed block sizes (predefined 16).

It basically has a “slot” for each file, you may think a queue of the blocks in this file, and tries to work its way through to the end of all queues. So it takes from the slot with the smallest block, writes it to the output file, and refills the slot with the next queue element from that file.
It is a little more sophisticated, because instead of looking through all slots for the next smallest block, it actually juggles the slots (files) in a sorted manner.
I will definitely reuse this.

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#include <stdio.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <string.h>
 
#define outputfile "mergedblocks"
#ifndef DEBUG
#define DEBUG 0
#endif
 
#define ENTRYSIZE 16
 
FILE * f;
 
int comp(const char * a, const char * b) {
	int i;
	for (i = 0; i < ENTRYSIZE; i++) {
		if (a[i] != b[i])
			return a[i] - b[i];
	}
	return 0;
}
void switchentries(char * a, char * b) {
	int i; 
	char t;
	for(i=0; i<ENTRYSIZE; i++) {
		t = a[i];
		a[i] = b[i];
		b[i] = t;
	}
}
 
 
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
	int i;
	int j;
	int nfiles;
	int v;
 
	char ** filenames;
	FILE ** files;
	FILE * outfile;
	char ** data;
	unsigned long * nentries;
	int * slot2file;
 
	assert(argc > 1);
	filenames = argv + 1;
	nfiles = argc - 1;
 
	files = (FILE **)calloc(nfiles, sizeof(FILE*));
	assert(files != NULL);
	data = (char **) calloc(nfiles, sizeof(char*));
	assert(data != NULL);
	nentries = (unsigned long *) calloc(nfiles, sizeof(unsigned long));
	assert(nentries != NULL);
	slot2file = (int *) calloc(nfiles, sizeof(int));
	assert(slot2file != NULL);
	for (i = 0; i < nfiles; i++) {
		files[i] = fopen(filenames[i], "r");
		assert(files[i] != NULL);
		nentries[i] = 0;
		slot2file[i] = i;
		data[i] = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char) * ENTRYSIZE);
		assert(data[i] != NULL);
		memset((void*)data[i], 0, ENTRYSIZE);
 
		/* load first entry */
		for (j = 0; j < ENTRYSIZE; j++) {
			v = getc(files[i]);
			assert(v != EOF);
			data[i][j] = v;
		}
		nentries[i]++;
		/* find next fitting */
		for(j = i - 1; j >= 0 && comp(data[j], data[j + 1]) > 0; j--) {
			if(DEBUG)
			printf("switching %d <-> %d\n", j, j+1);
			switchentries(data[j+1], data[j]);
			v = slot2file[j+1];
			slot2file[j+1] = slot2file[j];
			slot2file[j] = v;
		}
	}
	outfile = fopen(outputfile, "w");
	assert(outfile != NULL);
 
	while(1) {
		if(DEBUG)
		for (i = 0; i < nfiles; i++) {
			printf("slot %3d: ", i);
			for(j = 0; j < ENTRYSIZE; j++) {
				printf("%02x", (unsigned char)data[i][j]);
			}
			j = slot2file[i];
			if (j < 0) {
				printf(" (ended)");
				j = (j + 1)*-1;
			}
			printf("\t%d->%d: '%s'", i, j, filenames[j]);
			printf("\n");
		}
		if(slot2file[0] < 0) {
			break;
		}
		/* smallest is at 0 */
		/* write out smallest */
		if (slot2file[1] >= 0 && comp(data[0], data[1]) == 0) {
			printf("duplicate found\n");
			printf("file %s, item %lu\n", filenames[slot2file[0]], nentries[slot2file[0]]);
			printf("file %s, item %lu\n", filenames[slot2file[1]], nentries[slot2file[1]]);
			for(j = 0; j < ENTRYSIZE; j++) {
				printf("%02x", (unsigned char)data[0][j]);
			}
			printf("\n");
		} else {
			if(DEBUG)
			printf("smallest writeout\n");
			for (j = 0; j < ENTRYSIZE; j++) {
				putc(data[0][j], outfile);
			}
		}
 
		if(DEBUG)
		printf("refill %s\n", filenames[slot2file[0]]);
		/* refill slot if possible */
		for (j = 0; j < ENTRYSIZE; j++) {
			v = getc(files[slot2file[0]]);
			if (v == EOF) {
				if(DEBUG)
				printf("end of file\n");
				slot2file[0] = -slot2file[0] - 1;
				break;
			}
			data[0][j] = v;
		}
		if (slot2file[0] >= 0) {
			nentries[slot2file[0]]++;
		}else{ /* push to the end */
			if(DEBUG)
			printf("moving to the end\n");
			for(j = 1; j < nfiles && slot2file[j] >= 0; j++) {
				i = j - 1;
				if(DEBUG)
				printf("switching %d <-> %d\n", i, j);
				switchentries(data[i], data[j]);
				v = slot2file[i];
				slot2file[i] = slot2file[j];
				slot2file[j] = v;
			}
 
		}
		/* put in right place (bubblesort for 1 unsorted item at 0) */
		if(DEBUG)
		printf("sorting\n");
		for(j = 1; j < nfiles && slot2file[j] >= 0;j++){
			i = j - 1;
			if(comp(data[i], data[j]) > 0) {
				if(DEBUG)
				printf("switching %d <-> %d\n", i, j);
				switchentries(data[i], data[j]);
				v = slot2file[i];
				slot2file[i] = slot2file[j];
				slot2file[j] = v;
			}else{
				break;
			}
		}
	}
 
 
	for (i = 0; i < nfiles; i++) {
		slot2file[i] = -(slot2file[i] + 1);
		fclose(files[i]);
		if (i>0)
			nentries[0] += nentries[i];
	}
	fclose(outfile);
	printf("mergesorted %d files (%lu entries), wrote to %s.\n", 
		nfiles, nentries[0], outputfile);
	/*free(data);*/
 
	return 0;
}

I adapted the perl code here: http://blog.doomicile.de/2008/08/11/moving-dokuwiki-pages-with-perl/

It originally moves pages according to a month/day/year scheme.

I just wanted to move all the pages to a subnamespace. Here is my script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;
use WWW::Mechanize::FormFiller;
use URI::URL;
# list with page names
my @urls = `cat liste.txt`;
my $agent = WWW::Mechanize->new( autocheck => 1 );
my $formfiller = WWW::Mechanize::FormFiller->new();
$agent->env_proxy();
print "Logging in ... \n";
$agent->get('http://myurl/wiki/doku.php?do=login');
$agent->form_number(7) if $agent->forms and scalar @{ $agent->forms };
$formfiller->add_filler( 'u' => Fixed => 'myadmin' );
$formfiller->add_filler( 'p' => Fixed => 'mypassword' );
$formfiller->fill_form( $agent->current_form );
$agent->submit();
print "Logging in done.\n";
my $n, my $o, my $p;
foreach (@urls) {
print $_;
( $n, $o ) = m/(.*):([^:]*)/;
$p = 'myprefix:';
if (length($n) == 0) {
$p = 'myprefix';
( $o ) = m/(.*)/;
}
print '=> ' . $p . '|' . $n . '|' . $o . "\n";
$agent->get( "http://myurl/wiki/doku.php?id=" . $_ . "&do=admin&page=pagemove" );
$agent->form_number(6) if $agent->forms and scalar @{ $agent->forms };
$formfiller->fill_form( $agent->current_form );
$formfiller->fill_form( $agent->current_form );
if (length($n) == 0) {
$formfiller->add_filler( 'nsr' => Fixed => '' );
$formfiller->add_filler( 'newns' => Fixed => $p );
$formfiller->add_filler( 'ns' => Fixed => $p );
} else {
$formfiller->add_filler( 'nsr' => Fixed => '<new>' );
$formfiller->add_filler( 'newns' => Fixed => $p . $n );
$formfiller->add_filler( 'ns' => Fixed => ':' );
}
$formfiller->add_filler( 'pagename' => Fixed => $o );
$formfiller->fill_form( $agent->current_form );
$agent->save_content("/tmp/mydump.txt");
$agent->submit();
$agent->save_content("/tmp/mydump-response.txt");
}

PS: Apparently, I can write perl. I did not know.

Ever wanted to get answers to questions like the following?

3 kilometers in meters
6000 gallons in litres
1E+06 au in pc
7*4 EUR in dollars
0x5621*sin(3)+16 euro in dollar
$ 0.50*100/3 in euro
-L- 0.50 in euro
15 kg/m^3 in g/cm^3
3E+09*sin(3)+pow(3,10) kg/m^3 in g/cm^3
3 1000 in 1

And that quickly, from your desktop?

There existed a Converter and a Calculator extension, I made them work together.

Download: converterplus-1.9.tar (bz2, 9 KB) converterplus-1.8.tar (bz2, 6 KB)
Howto install:
You have to copy both files from the archive to ~/.gnome2/deskbar-applet/modules-2.20-compatible/, then activate them in the deskbar-applet Preferences.

Old versions of Converter and Calculator will not work together!
You can easily check if you got the right versions: They have my name as author in them and contain the line “This version of calculator can be used with converter” and vice versa.

You need to have the program units installed to benefit from Calculator. It is in your distribution’s repository under the name ‘units’.

Bugs: Please send bug reports by email or leave a comment here.

Technical details:
(users don’t need to read this)

The question was to either copy over the code from Calculator to Converter or to reuse the Module. Code duplication (DRY) was a definite argument against that. If Calculators code gets updated, Converter benefits too. Also, you can enable each functionality seperately.

Problem was to access the other module when loaded in deskbar, I made a hack for loading a file in the same directory, no matter of the context (see source).

If you copy-paste a table out of open-office, it is usually one line per cell.

This Python script converts it into a LaTeX-table (without \begin and \end):

table2latex.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys

f = sys.stdin

if(len(sys.argv) < 2):

        print "First Argument is number of columns"

        sys.exit(1)

numcolumns = int(sys.argv[1])

borders = False

if len(sys.argv) > 2 and sys.argv[2] == "--with-borders":

        borders = True

i = 0

while True:

        for j in range(numcolumns):

                l = f.readline()

                if l == "":

                        sys.exit(0)

                if i == 0:

                        print "\\tablehdr{%s}" % l.strip(),

                else:

                        print "%s" % l.strip(),

                if j == numcolumns - 1:

                        print '\\\\'

                        if borders:

                                print '\hline'

                else:

                        print '&',

        i = i + 1

Use it like this (pipe in from stdin, first arg is column count):

[user@thiscomputer ~]$ seq 30 | python table2latex.py 3

\tablehdr{1} & \tablehdr{2} & \tablehdr{3} \\

4 & 5 & 6 \\

7 & 8 & 9 \\

10 & 11 & 12 \\

13 & 14 & 15 \\

16 & 17 & 18 \\

19 & 20 & 21 \\

22 & 23 & 24 \\

25 & 26 & 27 \\

28 & 29 & 30 \\

[user@thiscomputer ~]$ 

The second argument can be if borders should be used, i.e. \hline after each row.

This is a script only of interest to tutors in TIL, who use sbt.logic.at for entering students data. It sets the edited selection when one enters gradings sbt-logic-at.user (js, 2 KB).
Install Greasemonkey first, then click the link or download and add manually.

To be able to search and use the Skype chat log, message history, and call history I reverse-engineered the Skype file format of chatmsg256.dbb, chatmsg512.dbb, callmember256.dbb, … files.

I made a script able to export the history to html, as well as Python classes able to random-access the logs.

As far as I can see, I’m the first one on the net that did this, everyone else is sane and uses the API.

You can view and edit all information here: http://johbuc6.coconia.net/doku.php/skype/start