steph's Journal

just another $hacker

steph — 2006-07-21T11:27:48+00:00

the other day in some answer to a post in the ast-user mailing list, I wrote just another $hacker by mistake (must be that silly habit of using the $ key and I am no businessman ;); I was about to delete it, when I thought "hey, that's cute" so I decided to google for it...

Actually the beast must have a mind of its own as even the advanced search consistently remove the $ sign. Well I haven't investigating much...will look later

Well anyway I like this "just another $hacker": it fits well I am a perl and ksh93 hacker.

a generic proxy (or port forwarder)

steph — 2005-12-08T14:46:15+00:00

On my local net, only a couple machines are "visible" from another coupled intranet, which means
that a client PC is subject to arbitrary connection
severing after a relatively short time...sic

it is clear that I need a port forwarder, and I need it fast (as usual)...this means perl and first CPAN to make sure I don't reinvent the obvious.

So I came across the Net::Server framework which has a multiplexer incarnation that seems promising; on the client side it is normally VERY protocol-oriented so as a basis I will use some code from Lincoln Stein's network book.

ok network code is only half the story, as I soon discover, the true question is when do I close a client connection? there are some obvious cases,
server closes its read end (or both) client says it's done; but what about mis-behaving or real slow clients etc....Humm need more thinking

Perl Best Practices

steph — 2005-12-06T19:56:39+00:00

Every two months or so I buy a few technical, scientific (or maths) books. The format I like most is a few introductory chapters and then some reference material: this survives best the passing
of time; actually this seems to be some O'reilly pattern (at least if it's not a GUI-oriented book).
Anyway most of the time, especially when I cannot find something new that interests me, o something
sufficiently well written, I end up buying some perl book. About one month and half ago I bought Damian Conway Perl Best Practices (PBP) and Mark Jason Dominus Higher Order Perl (HOP).

The book did not appeal much at first, being a long sequence of recipees, but quickly I started looking at some of the chapters that interest me more, and simply could not stop reading; I read all the book "diagonally" and then started up again from chapter 1 to the end. Overall a great read and a fine reference to peel practices well worth of applying __now__