Re: putting escape characters in files
* David H. Adler ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:55:46AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: I see a topic far in the distance and rapidly dwindling... Topic? What's a topic? A London.pm thread topic is like a non-alchoholic ingredient in a cocktail, its only there so you can pretend not to be an inebriated addict. -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:55:46AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: I see a topic far in the distance and rapidly dwindling... Topic? What's a topic? :-) -- David H. Adler - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ Six course banquet of nothing, with a scoop of sod-all for a palate cleanser - Rupert Giles
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your less,more,pg,sed,awkperl binaries are all fscked? :-) -Dom
Re: putting escape characters in files
Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your less,more,pg,sed,awkperl binaries are all fscked? :-) Use dd with the count= option for the first page, and with count= and skip= for subsequent pages :) 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: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:10:13AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your less,more,pg,sed,awkperl binaries are all fscked? :-) Use dd with the count= option for the first page, and with count= and skip= for subsequent pages :) You're right, but assuming you can get into a bourne shell, you can still do things like write cat(1) in sh, as well. Although it'd be hard to control without ^S and ^Q, unless you have a modern /bin/sh with the arithmetic stuff to count lines with. Otherwise you'd have to use expr(1), which is also probably busted. We now return you to your regularly scheduled comp.unix.buffy debate... -Dom
Re: putting escape characters in files
Dominic Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your less,more,pg,sed,awkperl binaries are all fscked? :-) Stallman used to have a long rant about ^S/^Q that shipped with the emacs source. Wonder if it's still there. -- 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: putting escape characters in files
Dominic Mitchell wrote: assuming you can get into a bourne shell, you can still do things like write cat(1) in sh, as well. This is not going to help you pause output. Although it'd be hard to control without ^S and ^Q, ...which was what the original post was all about. 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: putting escape characters in files
On Thu, 10 May 2001 22:25:00 +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: (Someone has a quote about the only safe thing to send down a serial line being a break, because emacs interprets every character) You mean this? On a normal ascii line, the only safe condition to detect is a 'BREAK' - everything else having been assigned functions by Gnu EMACS. -- Tarl Neustaedter I find that having an enormous sig file is extremely useful on occasions like this. -- Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] The network had broken because someone had snipped out 40 cm of cable, apparently to tie something together. -- Alex McLean
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:41:20AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Dominic Mitchell wrote: assuming you can get into a bourne shell, you can still do things like write cat(1) in sh, as well. This is not going to help you pause output. Although it'd be hard to control without ^S and ^Q, ...which was what the original post was all about. No, you'd need the maths operators that came with later shells, so you could work out lines. Dammit, I'm going to have to write shmore now. #!/bin/sh lineno=1 while read line do echo $line lineno=$((lineno+1)) if [ $(($lineno % 24)) = 0 ] ; then echo -n -- more -- read ans /dev/tty test $ans = q exit 0 fi done -Dom
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, 11 May 2001, Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:41:20AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Dominic Mitchell wrote: assuming you can get into a bourne shell, you can still do things like write cat(1) in sh, as well. This is not going to help you pause output. Although it'd be hard to control without ^S and ^Q, ...which was what the original post was all about. No, you'd need the maths operators that came with later shells, so you could work out lines. Dammit, I'm going to have to write shmore now. #!/bin/sh lineno=1 while read line do echo $line lineno=$((lineno+1)) if [ $(($lineno % 24)) = 0 ] ; then echo -n -- more -- read ans /dev/tty test $ans = q exit 0 fi done That breaks if the line is longer than the width of your screen. MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. -- Robert D. Sprecht, Rand Corp.
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:14:08AM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: On Fri, 11 May 2001, Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:41:20AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Dominic Mitchell wrote: assuming you can get into a bourne shell, you can still do things like write cat(1) in sh, as well. This is not going to help you pause output. Although it'd be hard to control without ^S and ^Q, ...which was what the original post was all about. No, you'd need the maths operators that came with later shells, so you could work out lines. Dammit, I'm going to have to write shmore now. #!/bin/sh lineno=1 while read line do echo $line lineno=$((lineno+1)) if [ $(($lineno % 24)) = 0 ] ; then echo -n -- more -- read ans /dev/tty test $ans = q exit 0 fi done That breaks if the line is longer than the width of your screen. Oh dear. -Dom
Re: putting escape characters in files
Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: That breaks if the line is longer than the width of your screen. So do a lot of cheap pager routines. 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: putting escape characters in files
At 10:32 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote: Dominic Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your less,more,pg,sed,awkperl binaries are all fscked? :-) Stallman used to have a long rant about ^S/^Q that shipped with the emacs source. Wonder if it's still there. You know, from the outside, Unix looks so well designed and clean and modern... -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: putting escape characters in files
On or about Fri, May 11, 2001 at 10:48:41AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson typed: You know, from the outside, Unix looks so well designed and clean and modern... From the outside, Windows looks as if it works. ObRant: computers and OSes in their current state are not consumer devices. They're not sufficiently reliable or intuitive. Bad marketing has made people think they need the things; most of them are wrong... Roger
Re: putting escape characters in files
* at 11/05 11:32 +0100 Roger Burton West said: On or about Fri, May 11, 2001 at 10:48:41AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson typed: You know, from the outside, Unix looks so well designed and clean and modern... From the outside, Windows looks as if it works. ObRant: computers and OSes in their current state are not consumer devices. They're not sufficiently reliable or intuitive. Bad marketing has made people think they need the things; most of them are wrong... you just have to see that people have trouble with palm's sometimes and they are so much more simple to realise that your average fully fledged computer in not a consumer device. but then any reasonably flexible multi-purpose device is always going to have a hard time being a consumer device as by it's nature it's complex and trying to make complex things appear simple is very very hard. OTOH, if it was simple it's be no fun :) [1] struan [1] usual caveats regarding definition of fun apply
Re: putting escape characters in files
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ObRant: computers and OSes in their current state are not consumer devices. They're not sufficiently reliable or intuitive. Bad marketing has made people think they need the things; most of them are wrong... OK, so what does it take? For me, the sorts of things that I _think_ IPv6 has should go a long way. Ubiquitous encryption and authentication will breed the real next generation of applicances. Or something. -- 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: putting escape characters in files
On or about Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:37:20AM +0100, Struan Donald typed: but then any reasonably flexible multi-purpose device is always going to have a hard time being a consumer device as by it's nature it's complex and trying to make complex things appear simple is very very hard. Yes. Things like the Amstrad word-processor are what people really want. (Just ask any secretary who was forced to upgrade from one to a PC.) R
Re: putting escape characters in files
On or about Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:32:33AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson typed: Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ObRant: computers and OSes in their current state are not consumer devices. They're not sufficiently reliable or intuitive. Bad marketing has made people think they need the things; most of them are wrong... OK, so what does it take? While using a computer is a skill considered harder than using a washing machine or mowing a lawn, they're not ready. Putting pretty interfaces on existing unstable systems does not help to make them simpler... R
Re: putting escape characters in files
At 11:37 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote: but then any reasonably flexible multi-purpose device is always going to have a hard time being a consumer device as by it's nature it's complex and trying to make complex things appear simple is very very hard. I can never work out if life is getting simpler or more complex. Computers seem very complex, and an application (lets say, a spreadsheet) appears to have thousands of features and whatnot that make the business of creating a Profit/Loss sheet far more complex than it ever was (or by implication ought to be). But this replaced a system of copybooks, ledgers, accounting systems and procedures that was also very complex. Not only that, but all the actual arithmetic had to be done (by the human) as well. So the accountant of 1890 needed to do mental arithmetic very fast and accurately (and in L.S.D.), and had to know and understand a bookshelf full of different ledgers, each with different columns, tables and and systems. And they had to work with near 100% accuracy, because of the difficulty of erasing or re-doing work. I think the difference is not that computers (or cars, or whatever) are that much more complex than what went before them. The difference is: 1. People are expected to understand and deal with all these things, not to specialise in one. Today, we are expected to be able to drive a car and use a spreadsheet, and then paint the spare room. The Victorian accountant most likely would not have known how to ride, certainly not have known how to look after a horse. They would not have done their own cooking, even, would not be responsible for repairing or even organising repairs to their rented accomodation, etc etc. 2. The rate of change is very fast. The Victorian's system of accountancy, while more complex, would have been what he grew up with, and would not have changed radically over his life (assuming he retired prior to the 1940's). Jon I see a topic far in the distance and rapidly dwindling... -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: putting escape characters in files
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Putting pretty interfaces on existing unstable systems does not help to make them simpler... That's part of it. Landing a thudding great book of what the thing _can_ do, rather than a cookbook of what you _want_ it to do is very offputting. There's a computer version of the Poke'mon card game that leads you through learning the rules very gently and very well. That's the sort of thing we need for gadgets...start off with stop and play and then gently lead you through to the hard stuff. Or make it like the Tivo - it just works. -- 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: putting escape characters in files
* at 11/05 11:49 +0100 Dave Hodgkinson said: Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Putting pretty interfaces on existing unstable systems does not help to make them simpler... That's part of it. Landing a thudding great book of what the thing _can_ do, rather than a cookbook of what you _want_ it to do is very offputting. but then what you want to do differs greatly for different people so instead of one book with lots of information you have to sift through you get lots of books you have to sift through to find the right one. I imagine most computer neophytes find their first visit to the computer section of any large bookshop pretty damn confusing to start with. plus you're assuming people know what they want to do, or even what they can do. The fact that you could have _two_ windows open at once was a revelation to a friends dad recently. There is a very real argument for devices that do one thing and one thing only but do it in a very simple way without all the flimflam that accompanies most modern computers. Donald Norman has quite a few good books on this. Or make it like the Tivo - it just works. which is kind of a proof of the one thing very well point. struan
Re: putting escape characters in files
Struan Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There is a very real argument for devices that do one thing and one thing only but do it in a very simple way without all the flimflam that accompanies most modern computers. Donald Norman has quite a few good books on this. Agreed, but they MUST talk to each other. Securely and knowingly. -- 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: putting escape characters in files
* at 11/05 12:07 +0100 Dave Hodgkinson said: Struan Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There is a very real argument for devices that do one thing and one thing only but do it in a very simple way without all the flimflam that accompanies most modern computers. Donald Norman has quite a few good books on this. Agreed, but they MUST talk to each other. Securely and knowingly. see Donald Norman. he talks about all this stuff. struan
Re: putting escape characters in files
At 10:05 AM 2001.05.11 +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your less,more,pg,sed,awkperl binaries are all fscked? :-) How about piping to lp then? Load up enough paper and you can pause as long as you'd like... ;) -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:32:15AM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: ObRant: computers and OSes in their current state are not consumer devices. ObRantContinuation: It goes a little further than that. Cars are now consumer devices; but if you were deploying a fleet of new company vans, you wouldn't expect the random office guy who'd read a dummies book to maintain them - you'd hire a mechanic. Martin
Re: putting escape characters in files
At 15:42 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote: It goes a little further than that. Cars are now consumer devices; but if you were deploying a fleet of new company vans, you wouldn't expect the random office guy who'd read a dummies book to maintain them - you'd hire a mechanic. Hmmm.. You're suggesting that the mechanic is a well trained engineer who knows all about cars, while companies are trying to get away with using pimply faced youths who've just read a book or got an MCP to maintain computers on the cheap. Your average mechanic follows instructions on a computer that tells him what part number to use to replace the faulty item. The act of replacing simply involves known what size socket wrench to use, and remembering where to attach the wires and hoses afterwards. The average bottom rung mechanic knows as much about cars as the average bottom rung tech support guy knows about computers. The difference is that the mechanic can't get a job without his NVQ, whereas the PFY can get a job without his MCP. -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:05:21PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: The average bottom rung mechanic knows as much about cars as the average bottom rung tech support guy knows about computers. Okay. I know very little of the vehicle maintenance industry, so it was a poor choice of analogy, but I hold to the rough point - there are too many organisations (notably schools, as well as companies) pushing excessive technical responsibilities onto unqualified and inexperienced staff. It's not fair on (a) the staff, (b) the rest of the organisation (c) others affected through poor security (private/personal information leakage, network abuse...) ...and arguably (d) unemployed BOFHs. Martin
Re: putting escape characters in files
At 16:31 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote: there are too many organisations (notably schools, as well as companies) pushing excessive technical responsibilities onto unqualified and inexperienced staff. That's actually a really good point (about the schools). You hear about all these 'computers for schools' initiatives, but very rarely do you hear about 'CS teachers for schools'. It usually means that some maths teach somewhere gets another 2 lessons per week and a small LAN to look after. Martin -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:14:08AM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: On Fri, 11 May 2001, Dominic Mitchell wrote: On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:41:20AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Dominic Mitchell wrote: assuming you can get into a bourne shell, you can still do things like write cat(1) in sh, as well. This is not going to help you pause output. Although it'd be hard to control without ^S and ^Q, ...which was what the original post was all about. No, you'd need the maths operators that came with later shells, so you could work out lines. Dammit, I'm going to have to write shmore now. #!/bin/sh lineno=1 while read line do lineno=$((lineno+1)) if [ $(($lineno % 24)) = 0 ] ; then echo -n -- more -- read ans /dev/tty test $ans = q exit 0 fi done That breaks if the line is longer than the width of your screen. echo $line --- echo `echo $line | dd bs=79 count=1 2/dev/null` -- Chris Benson P.S. Why are we doing this in sh(1)??
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:35:29PM +0100, Struan Donald wrote: kind of off topic but how do you get things like ^M and such like into a file for, say, writing vi macros? i've had a look through some docs but i'm beggining to suspect it's one of those bit of unix aracana know to a chosen few. or is there some site/resource that contains this info? Generally you can enter a control character into vi and most Unix shells by pressing ^V and then the character you want. In Emacs, it's ^Q, then the character you want. -Dom
Re: putting escape characters in files
On or about Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:35:29PM +0100, Struan Donald typed: kind of off topic but how do you get things like ^M and such like into a file for, say, writing vi macros? ctrl-x 0 d but using it in a search/replace pattern is harder. Roger
Re: putting escape characters in files
* at 10/05 16:37 +0100 Dominic Mitchell said: On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:35:29PM +0100, Struan Donald wrote: kind of off topic but how do you get things like ^M and such like into a file for, say, writing vi macros? i've had a look through some docs but i'm beggining to suspect it's one of those bit of unix aracana know to a chosen few. or is there some site/resource that contains this info? Generally you can enter a control character into vi and most Unix shells by pressing ^V and then the character you want. ah, thanks In Emacs, it's ^Q, then the character you want. only ^Q? that's not like emacs :) struan
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:35:29PM +0100, Struan Donald wrote: kind of off topic but how do you get things like ^M and such like into a file for, say, writing vi macros? perl -e 'print \cM' my-file ;-) .robin. ps. Dominic's already given a proper answer... -- Flee to me, remote elf!
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:44:41PM +0100, Struan Donald wrote: In Emacs, it's ^Q, then the character you want. only ^Q? that's not like emacs :) Well, it's assuming that nobody's fiddled with the keymaps. You could alternatively do: M-x quoted-insert RET RET -Dom
Re: putting escape characters in files
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:44:41PM +0100, Struan Donald wrote: * at 10/05 16:37 +0100 Dominic Mitchell said: Generally you can enter a control character into vi and most Unix shells by pressing ^V and then the character you want. ah, thanks In Emacs, it's ^Q, then the character you want. only ^Q? that's not like emacs :) If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you. stty -ixon removes this problem. (Someone has a quote about the only safe thing to send down a serial line being a break, because emacs interprets every character) Nicholas Clark
