I found repeated need to search and replace a lot of known little text strings all over a text configuration file, private.properties for NetBeans. Since I expect to do this several times in the future, I used sed commands in a script do the trick. With examples on this page and a little bit of regular expression, I was able to create a simple script to do what I need for now.
Archive for May, 2007
Search and Replace using sed command
A great way to learn Regular Expression…
… is to play with a tester like this one, while reading this page.
WOTD: surmise
surmise
verb
to form a notion of from scanty evidence : IMAGINE, INFER
Source: m-w.com
Chris Richardson on Testing
During JavaOne 2007, I attended Chris Richardson’s talk on Minimalist Testing Techniques for Enterprise Java Technology-Based Applications. Beyond the usual JUnit and CruiseControl, he mentioned a few new interesting names: JMock, EasyMock, and Selenium. Both JMock and EasyMock are object mock-up frameworks that allow a developer to focus on unit test a module independent from others. In order to use this, a team needs to agree on interfaces among modules before creating such mock-ups. Seleium is a web application testing tool that focus on browser compatibility and functional testing. It runs within a browser and has its own IDE for test development. These are certainly interesting testing tools.
Yahoo Pipes and Dapper.net
I was impressed to know that Yahoo Pipes allow average joe and geeks alike to remix information across the web through RSS/JSON. It has a powerful and rich web GUI editor that allows users to create new feeds without doing coding. It was really designed for the Web 2.0 age, with other data sources that speaks RSS or JSON. For well formed HTML, which is a form of XML, Yahoo Pipes seems not as easy to work with. Given that I know how to write my own regular expression parsing code in Java, perhaps someone can show me how something similar can be done in Yahoo Pipes. Beyond my special use case, Yahoo Pipes is still very powerful tool for many other Web 2.0 mash-ups and I would definitely come back if a new idea comes to my mind.
Dapper.net is a screen scrap site that allows users to extract information from a web page. It also have a powerful GUI that allows users to scrap data off a web page without writing code or even geeky stuff like regular expression or xpath. Dapper.net is really good at extracting a particular piece of information. You can just select a link, a paragraph or any particular block that may interest you on a page. This is a very powerful way to select several fields off a complex HTML page. However, it isn’t very intelligent at recognizing a long list. For a list, the user may have to select each individual item, which can be very tedious and error pron. Even though for my specific use case, it practically is useless, I still respect the creator(s) behind Dapper.net for creating such a wonderful tool for some people.
All in all, both Yahoo Pipes and Dapper.net attempt to bring some power of information processing to the masses and enable creative data remixing. At the same time, building powerful GUIs also limits users’ expressiveness. This is a trade-off that the designers of these tools made in order to bring usability up to a level that average Joe/Jane can actually understand and learn quickly. For those who needs more, he/she can write her own code to do what she/he wants.
Ignore files during svn commit
Subversion can ignore certain files when you attempt to commit. In NetBeans, it is just as simple as right click on the Locally Modified file in Subversion panel and choose Ignore option. On the command-line, you can see this section from the documentation. you can also configure the global-ignore property in Subversion’s configuration file.
This is how I configure NIS client
I followed this howto to reconfigure a NIS client machine.
WOTD: brittle
brittle
adj.
1 a : easily broken, cracked, or snapped b : easily disrupted, overthrown, or damaged : FRAIL
2 a : PERISHABLE, MORTAL b : TRANSITORY, EVANESCENT
3 : easily hurt or offended : SENSITIVE
4 : SHARP
5 : lacking warmth, depth, or generosity of spirit : COLD
Source: m-w.com
WOTD: myopic
myopic
noun
1 : a condition in which the visual images come to a focus in front of the retina of the eye resulting especially in defective vision of distant objects
2 : a lack of foresight or discernment : a narrow view of something
Source: m-w.com
Sun Cluster
I have been getting several Sun Cluster inquiries from people recently. So, here is a quick intro with links to lots of resources:
Sun Cluster is Sun’s clustering technology that can bring high availability to your applications or you can extend it to fit your high availability needs.. Since it’s free to download, you can install it on a single physical machine with multiple cluster nodes in different zones in Solaris 10 for testing purpose. You can also install it on at least 16-nodes to make your application both fault tolerant and scaling. Before you ask further questions, make sure you have read the documentation.
