Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

[Piers Cawley]

David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Unfortunately no.  You'd have to:
>   LOCK the table
>   SELECT the maximum id currently in use and add one
>   INSERT with that id
>   UNLOCK the table
> so all your other queries will block until the table is unlocked.

Create a 'seq' table associated with each table that needs
autoincrement.

LOCK that table.
SELECT the one entry that is the next value in the sequence.
UPDATE the entry with an incremented value.
UNLOCK the sequence table

INSERT into data table using the id you got from the other table.

Which looks to me like it should be faster.

-- 
Piers Cawley
www.iterative-software.com

Re: Good Accountants

[Piers Cawley]

Robin Szemeti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> [ and don't even ask me about the time Demon distributed some pox ridden
> disk with IE4.1 on it ..'err I just installed the latest version of
> Turnpike and seem to have inherited IE4 .. how do I get rid of it as its
> screwed my desktop and folders' 'easy sir just do remove-programs etc'
> 'err hello .. Ive done that and my desktop is *still* screwed .. my
> folders appear as some sort of poxy browser with a stop button and
> back-forward buttons and they didn't before and I dont want them' ' err
> sorry sir .. it does some things to the kernel that can't be removed' 
> now I am absolutely totally 100% certain that some web browser (and thats
> all it is) should *not* mess around with the way I view folders. I think
> that was a turning point for me and my judgement is probably clouded and
> unnecessarily predjudiced against it. ]

Well, if you're daft enough to install Turdpoke you deserve all you
get. 

-- 
Piers Cawley
www.iterative-software.com

Re: Good Accountants

[Roger Burton West]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:33:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
>actually .. nutscrape under Linux annoys me when it insists on looking up
>a hostname no matter how hard you click on the stop button .. bad
>threading.

Excellent reason to use a proxy. Junkbuster's good...

Roger

Re: Good Accountants

[Alex Page]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:04:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:

> on the one hand i _almost_ like IE as it displays images as they load and
> doesn't wait unitl it has em all b4 showing you the page (unless width
> and height tags) ..it doesnt care about missing  tags, it
> handles tables and CSS somewhat better than 4.7

Yeah, I was redoing my CV the other day (it's at http://www.cpio.org/~grimoire/cv.html 
if you want to employ me...) and IE handled things very nicely. I'm not exactly using 
complicated CSS, but the fact that it worked at all surprised me.

The one thing that's really bugging me is the lack of support for paged media - I've 
got a very simple rule that says that you should avoid page-breaking after the 
employer's name / details (so you get at least one paragraph of the job description 
in), but have yet to find a browser that works for this.

Alex
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth

Re: Another Komodo

[Paul Makepeace]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:50:34AM +0100, Dean wrote:
> theregister.co.uk has been running stories about it being used as a
> possible alternative if AOL decides to stop bundling IE. No technical
> details though...

http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=988225959

has a weensy bit at the last paragraph, saying it's basically a wrapper
over Gecko (yay, usable Mozilla GUI, finally).

Paul

Re: Another Komodo

[Dean]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 05:44:45PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> (I assume AOL's Komodo is some Mozilla repackaging? Anyone know
> anything about this?)

theregister.co.uk has been running stories about it being used as a
possible alternative if AOL decides to stop bundling IE. No technical
details though...

Dean
-- 
Profanity is the one language all programmers understand
   --- Anon

Another Komodo

[Paul Makepeace]

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5729530.html

Makes bizarre reading after AS's press releases.

(I assume AOL's Komodo is some Mozilla repackaging? Anyone know
anything about this?)

Paul

Re: Good Accountants

[Robin Szemeti]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:33:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > well .. it *does* handle them .. but ,,, errr .. sort of non cascading
> > IYSWIM ...
> 
> No it doesn't. It has almost no clue about stylesheets at all. Have you
> ever developed a CSS site for Netscape? And got it to work in anything
> like a sensible timeframe?

umm welll .. it epends on what you mean by CSS site .. if you mean just
bunging all the styles in a .css file and then using that as a sort of
template for crap like fonts, colours etc then it works just fine. beyond
that I wouldn't care to comment.

> > I don't care tuppence about 75mb of disc space .. its the 'half of all
> > your available memory and most of your processor' that does my head in.
> 
> You're right, that rampant hyperbole is really convincing me :-)
> None of my IE sessions are consuming more than a 1% of CPU. When they do
> use CPU it's hardly for long.

ok ok .. I give in ... maybe its better than it was .. maybe your machine
is quicker than mine. for me it just didn't work out that well, but I'm
no longer a windows user per se so it's not a big deal anymore.
   
> Why are people complaining about RAM & CPU? It is *sooo* cheap and will
> get cheaper & faster yet.
> 
> > We are talking about displaying a few words and pictures on a screen not
> 
> Right, and compilers are just turn .c files into something you can
> run. How hard can that be?

aww cmon .. it *is* bloated .. maybe that was an exageration .. but how
come Opera will fit on a floppy and IMHO does a better job when you
couldn't fit IE on 50 of em ?
   
> > bloated. Opera proves that. I do not require my web browser to do any of
> > the following: run active-X,  Flash, any form of streaming video. it
> 
> It doesn't, that's what plugins are for. It just do happens
> that millions of people like to watch Flash & movies so they come
> pre-bundled. I mean, why draw the line there? Toss out images and other
> ghastly things like ability to work with handicapped people, etc, etc.

Opera has good usability functions too ... and gives you the option of
tossing out images (and I used to use it that way ~30% of the time)
its going back a year or two but I do remember the IE thing insisting
it wanted to update itself etc and connecting to some poxy update service
at microsoft .. 

[ and don't even ask me about the time Demon distributed some pox ridden
disk with IE4.1 on it ..'err I just installed the latest version of
Turnpike and seem to have inherited IE4 .. how do I get rid of it as its
screwed my desktop and folders' 'easy sir just do remove-programs etc'
'err hello .. Ive done that and my desktop is *still* screwed .. my
folders appear as some sort of poxy browser with a stop button and
back-forward buttons and they didn't before and I dont want them' ' err
sorry sir .. it does some things to the kernel that can't be removed' 
now I am absolutely totally 100% certain that some web browser (and thats
all it is) should *not* mess around with the way I view folders. I think
that was a turning point for me and my judgement is probably clouded and
unnecessarily predjudiced against it. ]
 
> > should never, ever attempt to download anything on its own, install
> > anything or upgrade anything. ever. at all. ever. When I hit the stop
> > button it is because i want it to stop. dead. now. I do not want it to
> > continue what its doing because it thinks it knows best. it must stop
> 
> Hmm, IE does stop almost immediately. 

yours might .. mine is a beligerent thing. I only keep a windows machine
for 'compatability testing'  but it does seem to take a few presses
especially on anything in frames or with javascript. it seems totally
determined to continue with Javascript pre-load image arrays ...

>  THe Mac version in OS X requires
> a couple of presses but it's pretty well behaved otherwise (when it's
> not crashing or preventing me from copying the address line to the
> clipboard, bah). I've actually had more trouble getting Netscape to
> stop, YMMV, etc.

I'll give you that. Netscapes threading under linux seems a bit borked.
Opera under windows was excellent at that and its a surprisingly simple
but oh-so-important feature (to me) that frequently fails in various
things.

> > loading the page NOW. IE fails many if not all of those test. I'm a bit
> > of a browser luddite im afraid.
> 
> http://lynx.browser.org/

ahh .. sanctuary :)

err that was only half serious btw .. I do find lynx still useful for
perusing html documentation on remote machines but thats about it these
days.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: Good Accountants

[Robin Szemeti]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:04:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > depends dunnit ...
> 
> Not really, Netscape 4.x sucks. No two ways about it.
> 
> > and height tags) ..it doesnt care about missing  tags, it
> > handles tables and CSS somewhat better than 4.7 OTOH its so far from being
> 
> You mean it handles them at all. CSS in Netscape is so bad as to be a
> joke. I mean, come on -- this is a *1996* invention!! One of the reasons
> the web still sucks is 'cos of f**king Netscape and no-CSS.

well .. it *does* handle them .. but ,,, errr .. sort of non cascading
IYSWIM ...
  

> But, how is it non compliant? And when was 75MB of diskspace an issue?
> That's about 20p.

I don't care tuppence about 75mb of disc space .. its the 'half of all
your available memory and most of your processor' that does my head in.
We are talking about displaying a few words and pictures on a screen not
running a spacecraft. Web browsers do NOT need to be that big and
bloated. Opera proves that. I do not require my web browser to do any of
the following: run active-X,  Flash, any form of streaming video. it
should never, ever attempt to download anything on its own, install
anything or upgrade anything. ever. at all. ever. When I hit the stop
button it is because i want it to stop. dead. now. I do not want it to
continue what its doing because it thinks it knows best. it must stop
loading the page NOW. IE fails many if not all of those test. I'm a bit
of a browser luddite im afraid.

  
> > I like nutscrape for setting stuff up with because it is a bit picky ...
> 
> Use a validator rather than a broken HTML parser.

Its not borken .. just 'picky' ;) 
 
> > it does fall over on errors and thats what you want for quick 'almost
> > right on the first pass' stuff .. then you feed it through
> 
> No you don't. You want a proper validator built right into your editor
> (see: HomeSite)

umm .. ok .. i'll look


> It's actually usable now I hear. Opera on Windows is great!

opera on windows was the one thing that made windows even vaguely
tolerable .. but not that tolerable.

actually .. nutscrape under Linux annoys me when it insists on looking up
a hostname no matter how hard you click on the stop button .. bad
threading.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: Good Accountants

[Paul Makepeace]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:33:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> well .. it *does* handle them .. but ,,, errr .. sort of non cascading
> IYSWIM ...

No it doesn't. It has almost no clue about stylesheets at all. Have you
ever developed a CSS site for Netscape? And got it to work in anything
like a sensible timeframe?

> I don't care tuppence about 75mb of disc space .. its the 'half of all
> your available memory and most of your processor' that does my head in.

You're right, that rampant hyperbole is really convincing me :-)
None of my IE sessions are consuming more than a 1% of CPU. When they do
use CPU it's hardly for long.

Why are people complaining about RAM & CPU? It is *sooo* cheap and will
get cheaper & faster yet.

> We are talking about displaying a few words and pictures on a screen not

Right, and compilers are just turn .c files into something you can
run. How hard can that be?

> bloated. Opera proves that. I do not require my web browser to do any of
> the following: run active-X,  Flash, any form of streaming video. it

It doesn't, that's what plugins are for. It just do happens
that millions of people like to watch Flash & movies so they come
pre-bundled. I mean, why draw the line there? Toss out images and other
ghastly things like ability to work with handicapped people, etc, etc.

> should never, ever attempt to download anything on its own, install
> anything or upgrade anything. ever. at all. ever. When I hit the stop
> button it is because i want it to stop. dead. now. I do not want it to
> continue what its doing because it thinks it knows best. it must stop

Hmm, IE does stop almost immediately. THe Mac version in OS X requires
a couple of presses but it's pretty well behaved otherwise (when it's
not crashing or preventing me from copying the address line to the
clipboard, bah). I've actually had more trouble getting Netscape to
stop, YMMV, etc.

> loading the page NOW. IE fails many if not all of those test. I'm a bit
> of a browser luddite im afraid.

http://lynx.browser.org/

Paul

Re: Good Accountants

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:20:35PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > > But, how is it non compliant? And when was 75MB of diskspace an issue?
> > > That's about 20p.
> > Where do you get sensible disk (including backup) that cheap? We'd all
> > like to know...
> Sorry, my mistake, 14p. 80GB for $216 + $2 for a hacksaw. Cut into
> a little over a thousand pieces. Hand out at parties.
> You backup your copy of IE? LOL

Ghost?

*I* don't have IE.

MBM

-- 
Matthew Byng-Maddick  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +44 20  8980 5714  (Home)
http://colondot.net/ +44 7956 613942  (Mobile)
perl -e '$i=sub{length($_[0])-1};$_= "\n.rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ" ;while(
&$i($_)){print unpack "x"x&$i($_)."a1", $_ ;$_=unpack"a".&$i($_),$_}print'

Re: Good Accountants

[Paul Makepeace]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:20:35PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > But, how is it non compliant? And when was 75MB of diskspace an issue?
> > That's about 20p.
> 
> Where do you get sensible disk (including backup) that cheap? We'd all
> like to know...

Sorry, my mistake, 14p. 80GB for $216 + $2 for a hacksaw. Cut into
a little over a thousand pieces. Hand out at parties.

You backup your copy of IE? LOL

Paul

Re: Good Accountants

[Chris Devers]

At 10:04 PM 2001.04.26 +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
>What would be nice would be a nutscrape-alike that put colored blobs or
>somesuch where errors were.. with hyperlinks to details of the error ... ;)

Starting point: "Using CSS as a Diagnostic Tool"
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/07/21/magazine/css_tool.html

   "[...] stylesheets can be used to:
 ·  See exactly how tables are structured 
 ·  Figure out how table cells are aligned 
 ·  Quickly see which images on a page still need ALT text 
 ·  Point out where you still have FONT tags lurking in your markup 
 ·  Expose the overall page structure"

'course you need a newer browser for it to work as advertised, but it seems to me like 
a clever solution to the problem...




--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Good Accountants

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> But, how is it non compliant? And when was 75MB of diskspace an issue?
> That's about 20p.

Where do you get sensible disk (including backup) that cheap? We'd all
like to know...

MBM

-- 
Matthew Byng-Maddick  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +44 20  8980 5714  (Home)
http://colondot.net/ +44 7956 613942  (Mobile)
perl -e '$i=sub{length($_[0])-1};$_= "\n.rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ" ;while(
&$i($_)){print unpack "x"x&$i($_)."a1", $_ ;$_=unpack"a".&$i($_),$_}print'

Re: Good Accountants

[Paul Makepeace]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:04:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> depends dunnit ...

Not really, Netscape 4.x sucks. No two ways about it.

> and height tags) ..it doesnt care about missing  tags, it
> handles tables and CSS somewhat better than 4.7 OTOH its so far from being

You mean it handles them at all. CSS in Netscape is so bad as to be a
joke. I mean, come on -- this is a *1996* invention!! One of the reasons
the web still sucks is 'cos of f**king Netscape and no-CSS.

> standards compliant it must die.  its bloatware taken to new levels. what
> is it? 75mb+ .. for a web browser .. ?

No, silly, it's part of the operating system :-)

But, how is it non compliant? And when was 75MB of diskspace an issue?
That's about 20p.

> I like nutscrape for setting stuff up with because it is a bit picky ...

Use a validator rather than a broken HTML parser.

> it does fall over on errors and thats what you want for quick 'almost
> right on the first pass' stuff .. then you feed it through

No you don't. You want a proper validator built right into your editor
(see: HomeSite)

> nutscrape-alike that put colored blobs or somesuch where errors were..
> with hyperlinks to details of the error ... ;)

See above :-)

> Linux beta but it had a todo list that went 'doesn't display text, or
> pictures. backround doesn't work yet. Can't load from network' or some
> equally trivial things .. that was 1 year ago .. maybe its time to
> revisit.

It's actually usable now I hear. Opera on Windows is great!

Paul

Re: Good Accountants

[Robin Szemeti]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:

> Anything that displays in IE will display fine in Opera. Mozilla
> is OK.  Netscape 4.x deserves to have sites intentionally break it
> (ooh, tricky, miss a closing table tag!) because it is shit & must die.

depends dunnit ...

on the one hand i _almost_ like IE as it displays images as they load and
doesn't wait unitl it has em all b4 showing you the page (unless width
and height tags) ..it doesnt care about missing  tags, it
handles tables and CSS somewhat better than 4.7 OTOH its so far from being
standards compliant it must die.  its bloatware taken to new levels. what
is it? 75mb+ .. for a web browser .. ? and thats even though theyve
hidden half of it in whats laughingly reffered to as a kernel!

I like nutscrape for setting stuff up with because it is a bit picky ...
it does fall over on errors and thats what you want for quick 'almost
right on the first pass' stuff .. then you feed it through
validator.w3c.org and its done innit. What would be nice would be a
nutscrape-alike that put colored blobs or somesuch where errors were..
with hyperlinks to details of the error ... ;)

Back in the days when I had a windows PC I had Opera 3.x .. it was great
.. light and fast, tables were a 'bit odd' but I liked it.  I tried the
Linux beta but it had a todo list that went 'doesn't display text, or
pictures. backround doesn't work yet. Can't load from network' or some
equally trivial things .. that was 1 year ago .. maybe its time to
revisit.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

RE: Re: Review of Data munging with Perl on Slashdot

[Dave Cross]

>From: Jonathan Stowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: 4/26/01 9:30:01 PM
>
>On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Niklas Nordebo wrote:
>
>> Gets a 9, apparently.
>>
>> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/26/1229238&mode=thread
>>
>
>For $deities sake dont tell Dave ...

Too late!

Dave...
[feeling smug]
-- 


"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one",
he said. But still they come.

Re: Buffy? .. naah .. wait till you see this

[Chris Devers]

At 09:19 PM 2001.04.26 +0100, you wrote:
>amusing:
>
>http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm

Cousin site to http://www.c-cup.com/, which seems to be down at the moment. 

Typical example: "Charisma Carpenter Guide to Selected Linux Software"
http://www.c-cup.com/linux/software-that-works.html
(http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.c-cup.com/linux/software-that-works.html)




--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Good Accountants

[Paul Makepeace]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:02:48PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> Yeah, but only testing it on one browser, ignoring the - what, 30%? - that
> don't use IE - that's kinda silly.  And unprofessional.  Sure, the bank

Anything that displays in IE will display fine in Opera. Mozilla
is OK.  Netscape 4.x deserves to have sites intentionally break it
(ooh, tricky, miss a closing table tag!) because it is shit & must die.

> I did go on to look at it using IE, for I know that first impressions can

I share your pain. It has this utterly obnoxious browser-resize
to full screen even though it's designed for a fixed size viewing
area! Retards!

Try http://www.hsbc.co.uk/

Paul

Buffy? .. naah .. wait till you see this

[Robin Szemeti]

amusing:

http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: Good Accountants

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 07:13:50PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:31:31AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > 
> > > http://www.flemingbank.com/
> > > 
> > > crap website, but I think it sums em up.
> > 
> > Yep, so crap that it gives nothing but a splash screen with no links on it
> > whatsoever.  If that sums them up, then I want nothing to do with such
> > manifest incompetence.
> 
> well apart from a crap website, they are a good very bank ...  personally
> I'd rather they put their efforts into banking rather than web design ...
> its just a fad after all.

Yeah, but only testing it on one browser, ignoring the - what, 30%? - that
don't use IE - that's kinda silly.  And unprofessional.  Sure, the bank
no doubt subcontracted the work to some numijahors, but that they accepted
and launched it like that does raise concerns about their quality control.

I did go on to look at it using IE, for I know that first impressions can
be misleading, and the site still sucks - it's hard to find any way of
getting feedback to them electronically, for example - but if using IE, it
doesn't suck much more than any other corporate site.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
 operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete

Re: Review of Data munging with Perl on Slashdot

[Jonathan Stowe]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Niklas Nordebo wrote:

> Gets a 9, apparently.
>
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/26/1229238&mode=thread
>

For $deities sake dont tell Dave ...

/J\

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Jonathan Stowe]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Ian Brayshaw wrote:

> Robin Houston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> >The first (PerlIO) method ought to work though, because PerlIO
> >layers are lower-level than tied filehandles. So if you can
> >use perl 5.7.1...
>
> Sure ... now all I have to do is convince my boss 5.7.1 is the best choice
> for a production environment ...
>

And hide the test failures if you are running on SCO OpenServer or
Unixware  (see p5p passim) :)

/J\

Re: Good Accountants

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 06:52:59PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:31:31AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> 
> > http://www.flemingbank.com/
> > 
> > crap website, but I think it sums em up.
> 
> Yep, so crap that it gives nothing but a splash screen with no links on it
> whatsoever.  If that sums them up, then I want nothing to do with such
> manifest incompetence.

And [EMAIL PROTECTED] bounces.  Oh dear.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
 operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete

Re: London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-04-23

[Paul Makepeace]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 02:17:01PM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> Doh!  We entirely missed this:
> 
> http://www.mysql.com/news/article-57.html

That's an amusing read! "'spos it legitimises us, but, but!"

> Which links to (not sure if it's working right now):
> 
> http://technet.oracle.com/tech/migration/index.htm
> 
> Apparently Oracle do have a toolkit for migrating from MySQL.

They indeed do! And no spritely thing is it,

 Omwb_13100.tar.gz (62,918,457 bytes) 

That's so impressively big I guess I'll have to set up a full MySQL
hack just to test it :)

Paul

Re: Good Accountants

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:31:31AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:

> http://www.flemingbank.com/
> 
> crap website, but I think it sums em up.

Yep, so crap that it gives nothing but a splash screen with no links on it
whatsoever.  If that sums them up, then I want nothing to do with such
manifest incompetence.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
 operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete

Re: Good Accountants

[Paul Makepeace]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:39:45AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> Flemings Premier Banking
> 01708 713317

God help you if you put your company into dormancy however. Then they
get really arsey since you're not depositing huge amounts of cash into
it any more.

They unilaterally decided to close my account a few months back
effectively ruining my health insurance policy and delaying payments
to my accountants. The only way (at least with HSBC) of setting up a
new business acct is from a director or company secretary so I have
had to find one of those and send form 288a flying across the atlantic.

flemings--,

Paul

Re: Good Accountants

[Robin Szemeti]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:31:31AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> 
> > http://www.flemingbank.com/
> > 
> > crap website, but I think it sums em up.
> 
> Yep, so crap that it gives nothing but a splash screen with no links on it
> whatsoever.  If that sums them up, then I want nothing to do with such
> manifest incompetence.

well apart from a crap website, they are a good very bank ...  personally
I'd rather they put their efforts into banking rather than web design ...
its just a fad after all.

Egg: have a good website .. and service at least as good as oh .. I
dunno .. BT?. .. easily.  The big diffrence is: when they do eventually
answer the phone they charge you 2.50. BT at least try and sell you
something before slapping a charge on.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Review of Data munging with Perl on Slashdot

[Niklas Nordebo]

Gets a 9, apparently.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/26/1229238&mode=thread

-- 
Niklas Nordebo -><- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -><- +447966251290
 "The day is seven hours and fifteen minutes old, and already it's
crippled with the weight of my evasions, deceit, and downright lies"

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Ian Brayshaw]

Robin Houston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>The first (PerlIO) method ought to work though, because PerlIO
>layers are lower-level than tied filehandles. So if you can
>use perl 5.7.1...

Sure ... now all I have to do is convince my boss 5.7.1 is the best choice 
for a production environment ...


Ian
_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Robin Houston]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 02:11:07AM +1000, Ian Brayshaw wrote:
> Thanks Robin. The TrueHandle package is essentially what I had implemented, 
> but it's the internal workings of require that stop the tie from being 
> honoured.

Yes, you're quite right. Sorry.

The first (PerlIO) method ought to work though, because PerlIO
layers are lower-level than tied filehandles. So if you can
use perl 5.7.1...

 .robin.

-- 
"I dreamt the other night that my nose had fallen off" --john melesky

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Ian Brayshaw]

Robin Houston wrote:



>In earlier perls, you'll need to make a tied filehandle:

Thanks Robin. The TrueHandle package is essentially what I had implemented, 
but it's the internal workings of require that stop the tie from being 
honoured. I presume that the require burrows down into the internals and 
isn't aware that it's a tie'd handle. As far as I can tell the code within 
the require call is unaware that this handle is an object. If you place an 
AUTOLOAD method in TrueHandle instead of the READ and READLINE methods, only 
DESTROY is called.


Ian

_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Ian Brayshaw]

From: Jonathan Stowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>So whats wrong with StatInc ?

OK, so StatINC will reload the module if the module source has changed. 
However, it's the handler I am pushing onto @INC that will generate the 
module source from a configuration file. If the configuration file changes, 
then the module needs to be regenerated and reloaded. I can't rely on a scan 
of %INC because the trigger for reloading the module is not the change of 
the module source, but the change in a secondary source.

Yes, one alternative would be to have a program monitor the configuration 
files and regenerate the modules whenever the configuration files change, 
but I'd prefer to have the regeneration occur when/if it is needed.

May be this will clarify what I'm trying to do (or let someone see where I 
have missed the boat):

sub generate_modules { .. }

use lib \&generate_modules;

...

require Module;

Module.pm doesn't exist, but Module.conf does, and generate_modules() 
converts Module.conf into Module.pm which is then loaded.

Later, while the program is still running, Module.conf changes, and I'd like 
a further call to

require Module;

(after the change in Module.conf) to regenerate and reload Module.pm.

By removing an entry in %INC I can get require to call generate_modules() 
again, even though Module has already been loaded.

My original question was concerned with trying to stop the unnecessary 
recompilation of Module.pm that results when its entry in %INC is removed 
and

require Module;

is called, but there has been no change to the configuration file, and hence 
no need to regenerate or reload the .pm file.

I am trying to implement transparent module creation so that in the program 
I don't have to know about the configuration files, and can treat them as 
normal modules.

If none of this makes any clear sense then I'll disappear and think some 
more.

Thanks for your suggestions and patience.



Ian

(who should have paid more attention during his formative years to learn how 
people communicate effectively)
_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Robin Houston]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:32:47AM +1000, Ian Brayshaw wrote:
>  Sometimes, however, no recompilation is necessary, and so I'd like 
> to return a filehandle that "evaluates to true" (in the 'do ' sense of 
> evaluates)
> 
> Is there a way to do this without creating a dummy file (i.e. can we do this 
> in memory)?

In bleadperl (and hence in the forthcoming 5.8) it's really easy to
do this. Just:

  sub true_filehandle {
my $true = "1";
open (my $fh, "<", \$true);
return $fh;
  }

In earlier perls, you'll need to make a tied filehandle:

package TrueHandle;
sub TIEHANDLE {
bless {};
}

sub READ {
my $self = shift;
return 0 if $self->{done} || $_[1] == 0;
substr($_[0], $_[2], 1) = "1";
$self->{done}=1;
return 1;
}

sub READLINE {
return if $self->{done};
$self->{done}=1;
return "1";
}

package main;
sub true_filehandle {
use Symbol;
my $fh = gensym();
tie *$fh, "TrueHandle";
return $fh;
}


.robin.

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Greg McCarroll]

* Philip Newton ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Ian Brayshaw wrote:
> > Sorry to pollute this list with a question about Perl...
> 
> Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy



i tried to run this and it didn't do anything, please check
buffy-tized code before posting ;-)

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: [london-list-summary] London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-04-23

[Dave Hodgkinson]

Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Leon Brocard writes:
> > Registration has opened for this year's Perl Conference in San
> > Diego. It's gonna be a great conference - the talks all look excellent
> > (thanks gnat!)
> 
> You're welcome.  I'm going to give a lightning talk at YAPC or TPC
> about just what a clusterfuck it was this year.  Many swearwords.
> 
> If I had more balls I'd do performance art in my lightning talks.
> "My God, cover your eyes Mary!  The angry man's shooting up with
> his own faeces!"

I think there's definitely scope for a "bile" track at any conference.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Jonathan Stowe]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Ian Brayshaw wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Sorry to pollute this list with a question about Perl...
>
> I am writing a customer handler for loading modules at runtime, taking
> advantage of the support for coderefs in the @INC array. By deleting entries
> in the %INC hash for loaded modules I can force Perl to recompile the module
> after it has been first loaded. This is particularly important with
> mod_perl, since the modules themselves may change during the life of the
> program.
>

So whats wrong with StatInc ?

/J\

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Merijn Broeren]

Quoting Ian Brayshaw ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> I am writing a customer handler for loading modules at runtime, taking 
> advantage of the support for coderefs in the @INC array. By deleting entries 
> in the %INC hash for loaded modules I can force Perl to recompile the module 
> after it has been first loaded. This is particularly important with 
> mod_perl, since the modules themselves may change during the life of the 
> program.
> 
http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/Apache/StatINC.html

I haven't read the rest of your post. :-)
-- 
Merijn Broeren|  I am blond, I am blond,
Software Geek | I am Bee El Oo En T !
  | 

require Module; and filehandles

[Ian Brayshaw]

Hi,

Sorry to pollute this list with a question about Perl...

I am writing a customer handler for loading modules at runtime, taking 
advantage of the support for coderefs in the @INC array. By deleting entries 
in the %INC hash for loaded modules I can force Perl to recompile the module 
after it has been first loaded. This is particularly important with 
mod_perl, since the modules themselves may change during the life of the 
program.

Deleting an entry in %INC allows me to trap the request from a 'require' 
call to load a module, even if it has already been loaded. If the module 
should be recompiled, then I simply return a filehandle to the module 
source. Sometimes, however, no recompilation is necessary, and so I'd like 
to return a filehandle that "evaluates to true" (in the 'do ' sense of 
evaluates), so that require thinks that it has successfully loaded and 
recompiled the module (to avoid the overhead of unneccessarily recompiling 
large modules).

Is there a way to do this without creating a dummy file (i.e. can we do this 
in memory)?

I have tried using a tie'd filehandle, but the internal workings of require 
mean that this doesn't work (unless, of course, I got my tie'ing wrong) as 
none of the tie'd package methods are called.


Cheers,


Ian

_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: require Module; and filehandles

[Philip Newton]

Ian Brayshaw wrote:
> Sorry to pollute this list with a question about Perl...

Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy
Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy

La la la, I can't hear you

Buffy Buffy Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Willow Buffy Buffy

We now return you to your regularly scheduled london-list.

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
All opinions are my own, not my employer's.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Re: [london-list-summary] London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-04-23

[Nathan Torkington]

Leon Brocard writes:
> Registration has opened for this year's Perl Conference in San
> Diego. It's gonna be a great conference - the talks all look excellent
> (thanks gnat!)

You're welcome.  I'm going to give a lightning talk at YAPC or TPC
about just what a clusterfuck it was this year.  Many swearwords.

If I had more balls I'd do performance art in my lightning talks.
"My God, cover your eyes Mary!  The angry man's shooting up with
his own faeces!"

Nat

Re: London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-04-23

[Dominic Mitchell]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 02:05:38PM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
> Jon Galliers asked about naming a file correctly when downloading from
> a CGI. Niklas Nordebo and Merijn Broeren provided solutions:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04654.html

Doh!  We entirely missed this:

http://www.mysql.com/news/article-57.html

Which links to (not sure if it's working right now):

http://technet.oracle.com/tech/migration/index.htm

Apparently Oracle do have a toolkit for migrating from MySQL.

-Dom

London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-04-23

[Leon Brocard]

This is the fourteenth weekly summary of the London Perl Mongers
mailing list. For the quiet week starting 2001-04-23:

Don't forget the London.pm website for meetings etc. The next meeting
is a social meeting and is on Thursday 3rd May (although it may be
moved if there is a tube strike):
http://london.pm.org/

Registration has opened for this year's Perl Conference in San
Diego. It's gonna be a great conference - the talks all look excellent
(thanks gnat!), and many London.pm-ers will be speaking (and even more
attending). So many, that listing them is our Feature of the Week! For
those scared by the high price of entrance, hotels (Barbie is looking
to share a room or find another hotel), and flights, there's always
YAPC (but I'd say it's well worth it):
http://conferences.oreilly.com/perl5/
http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04691.html
http://yapc.org/America/
http://yapc.org/Europe/

DJ Adams and Piers Harding
  o Transfusing Message Plasma into Business with Perl and Other Magic
Leon Brocard
  o Instant Compilers in Perl
  o Graphing Perl
Simon Cozens
  o 10 Modules I Wouldn't Go Anywhere Without
  o An Introduction to Mail::Audit
  o Calendering Toolkit
  o Inside Perl 5
  o Pretty Printing Perl
  o Unicode: Why, What, and How
  o Use Python
Dave Cross
  o Increasing Perl Use
Andy Wardley
  o Camel Goes Surfing
  o Camelot
  o Web Engineering with Perl and the Template Toolkit
  o XML::Schema
Simon Wistow
  o Flash in the Pan

The technical meeting last week was apparently quite good. Slides for
Robin Houston's "Mutagenic Modules" (quote: "I want to take Perl and
execute it as if it were an arbitrary language"), and Mark Fowler's
"Template Toolkit and XPath" talks are available:
http://london.pm.org/~robin/semantic-talk/0.title.html
http://london.pm.org/~mark/ttxpath/

Jon Galliers asked about naming a file correctly when downloading from
a CGI. Niklas Nordebo and Merijn Broeren provided solutions:
http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04654.html

Paul Makepeace wondered if there were some sort of MySQL -> Oracle
wrapper to help migration. There were various helpful posts but
nothing really came out of the discussion:
http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04664.html
http://www.mysql.com/
http://www.oracle.com/

The london.pm.org server, penderel, will be upgraded RSN with some
more RAM and a new 40G HD so we can store all our MP3s there :
http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04668.html

In other news, Nathan Torkington tells us to go see his favourite band
in the whole world "Bela Fleck and the Flecktones" next month
(US-style dates, careful), Jonathan Stowe creates Program::Approx, DJ
Adams appears on Byte, perlismybitch.com is about to expire, Robert
Shiels tries to find a name for his company, and www.menzies.co.uk is
apparently a good accountants:
http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04619.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/london-pm%40lists.dircon.co.uk/msg04663.html
http://www.byte.com/column/BYT20010404S0014

Dizzy dizzy dizzy, Leon
-- 
Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/
Iterative Software..http://yapc.org/Europe/

... C program run. C program crash. C programmer quit

Re: Good Accountants

[Robin Szemeti]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:

> > Flemings Premier Banking
> > 01708 713317
> > 
> > basically free for contractors (up to 20 cheques a month) and pay
> > interest. I got several hundred quid in intrest last year. Telephone
> > service and all that stuff.
> > most impressed .. and I do have other business acounts to comapre it to.
> > I would heartily recommend them. They are widely used by contractors.
> > 
> 
> +1
> 
> the service I've found to be excellent, they call you sir on the phone
> and sound like they mean it, quite shocking these day's.

yup .. unlike most banks they seem to reallise that they are privileged
to be looking after your money for you. 

http://www.flemingbank.com/

crap website, but I think it sums em up.
-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Online Banking (was: Re: Good Accountants)

[Dominic Mitchell]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:49:34AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
> I went with Barclays because they gave 12 months free banking and
> could group the online banking with my personal accounts.

On a side issue, do you know of any online banks that allow personal
accounts to download historical data?  I spent quite a while on Saturday
writing scripts to download statement data from lloydstsb.co.uk and then
discovered that it only went back about 2 statements.  Upon ring them up,
I was told that they were planning to introduce a feature that would let
you go back 4 or 5 statements or something equally pathetic.  *sigh*.

-Dom

Re: Good Accountants

[Robert Shiels]

From: "Robin Szemeti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> > recommended Menzies (www.menzies.co.uk) to me, and I went to see

> > On a similar point, can anyone recommend a good business bank account?

> Flemings Premier Banking
> 01708 713317
> basically free for contractors (up to 20 cheques a month) and pay
> interest. I got several hundred quid in intrest last year. Telephone
> service and all that stuff.
> most impressed .. and I do have other business acounts to comapre it to.
> I would heartily recommend them. They are widely used by contractors.

Interesting. Flemings was actually recommended to me by Menzies last night.
So my accountant is clueful on this too, which is encouraging. Thanks.

/Robert

Re: Good Accountants

[Dave Hodgkinson]

"Robert Shiels" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On a similar point, can anyone recommend a good business bank account?

Oxymoron.

I went with Barclays because they gave 12 months free banking and
could group the online banking with my personal accounts.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   

Re: Good Accountants

[Greg Cope]

Robin Szemeti wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> > Where do you live?
> >
> > DJ Adams recommended Menzies (www.menzies.co.uk) to me, and I went to see
> > them last night for the first time. They are going to set up my new company
> > for me too. They like IT contractors, and the partner I met with talked to
> > me for about 30 minutes on ways to avoid IR35 :-)
> 
> sound like a 'contractors accountant' .. mine (Lowson Ward in Birmingham)
> do nothing other than accounting for contractors and know all the
> relevant bits. Very often a 'general' accountant doesn't seem to know all
> the little wrinkles that one who specialises in contractors does. Well
> worth getting the right sort.
> 
> > Very professional, I like them so far. Based in Kingston and have other
> > offices around Surrey.
> >
> > On a similar point, can anyone recommend a good business bank account?
> 
> Flemings Premier Banking
> 01708 713317
> 
> basically free for contractors (up to 20 cheques a month) and pay
> interest. I got several hundred quid in intrest last year. Telephone
> service and all that stuff.
> most impressed .. and I do have other business acounts to comapre it to.
> I would heartily recommend them. They are widely used by contractors.
> 

+1

the service I've found to be excellent, they call you sir on the phone
and sound like they mean it, quite shocking these day's.

Greg


> >
> > --
> > Robert
> >
> >
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "Gareth Harper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: 26 April 2001 09:09
> > Subject: Good Accountants
> >
> >
> > > Can any of you contractor types recoomend a good accountant, as the one I
> > > was using (a friend of the family) suggested that I use an accountant who
> > > was more familiar with the IT contracting business, as he was more suited
> > to
> > > much larger companies.
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > Gareth Harper
> > >
> > >
> > >
> --
> Robin Szemeti
> 
> The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
> So I installed Linux!

Re: Good Accountants

[Robin Szemeti]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> Where do you live?
> 
> DJ Adams recommended Menzies (www.menzies.co.uk) to me, and I went to see
> them last night for the first time. They are going to set up my new company
> for me too. They like IT contractors, and the partner I met with talked to
> me for about 30 minutes on ways to avoid IR35 :-)

sound like a 'contractors accountant' .. mine (Lowson Ward in Birmingham)
do nothing other than accounting for contractors and know all the
relevant bits. Very often a 'general' accountant doesn't seem to know all
the little wrinkles that one who specialises in contractors does. Well
worth getting the right sort.

> Very professional, I like them so far. Based in Kingston and have other
> offices around Surrey.
> 
> On a similar point, can anyone recommend a good business bank account?

Flemings Premier Banking
01708 713317

basically free for contractors (up to 20 cheques a month) and pay
interest. I got several hundred quid in intrest last year. Telephone
service and all that stuff.
most impressed .. and I do have other business acounts to comapre it to.
I would heartily recommend them. They are widely used by contractors.

> 
> --
> Robert
> 
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "Gareth Harper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: 26 April 2001 09:09
> Subject: Good Accountants
> 
> 
> > Can any of you contractor types recoomend a good accountant, as the one I
> > was using (a friend of the family) suggested that I use an accountant who
> > was more familiar with the IT contracting business, as he was more suited
> to
> > much larger companies.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Gareth Harper
> >
> >
> >
-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: Good Accountants

[Robert Shiels]

Where do you live?

DJ Adams recommended Menzies (www.menzies.co.uk) to me, and I went to see
them last night for the first time. They are going to set up my new company
for me too. They like IT contractors, and the partner I met with talked to
me for about 30 minutes on ways to avoid IR35 :-)

Very professional, I like them so far. Based in Kingston and have other
offices around Surrey.

On a similar point, can anyone recommend a good business bank account?

--
Robert


- Original Message -
From: "Gareth Harper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: 26 April 2001 09:09
Subject: Good Accountants


> Can any of you contractor types recoomend a good accountant, as the one I
> was using (a friend of the family) suggested that I use an accountant who
> was more familiar with the IT contracting business, as he was more suited
to
> much larger companies.
>
> Thanks
> Gareth Harper
>
>
>

Good Accountants

[Gareth Harper]

Can any of you contractor types recoomend a good accountant, as the one I
was using (a friend of the family) suggested that I use an accountant who
was more familiar with the IT contracting business, as he was more suited to
much larger companies.

Thanks
Gareth Harper

Re: Company Name

[Redvers Davies]

> How did contractors here come up with the names for their companies, and can
> you think of anything with Shiels in the name that sounds good. I will
> mainly be doing SAP work, but hope to get other IT work too, so don't want
> SAP in the name.

Well, my company name is a description of what my company does:
Critical Integration Ltd;  I integrate critical systems.

The other stuff I do could have produced:
Random Perl Ltd.
EWIC Ltd.  (Encapsulate Workflow in Code)

I've always tried to avoid names which conjour up in the minds of customers
(or more importantly, the revenue) a small company.  So, Redvers Davies Ltd
or "Name Based" names were always out the window for me.


Red