On the importance of reading the docs – PHP’s date_parse errors
It’s important to read the documentation, and then read it again once or twice. PHP’s date_parse function parses a datetime string and returns an “array with information...
Category: Software Development
perl =~ operator interprets a RHS expression at run-time
This article starts with a conversation about adjusting compiled perl regular expressions and a sudden realisation – which went a little along the lines of:...
Joining log lines with sed
It’s often the case when analysing system logs that you want to create a summary bringing together data from different lines of a log –...
Generating pi (Ï€) using random numbers
I was entertained by Numberphile’s dice-based generation of an approximate of pi  so thought I’d throw together a quick script to try this out: random_vals_pi The...
Cache::FileCache Thoughts
If using perl Cache::FileCache, some comments offering a helpful starting point to get a cache that works in a relatively well behaved and unsurprising way:...
/usr/bin/base64 – copying and pasting code / patches betweeen terminals
The Scenario A couple of terminals open, connected to a mix of your own workstation, local development servers and remote servers running on a different...
Perl Gotcha : xor precedence
Perl has a logical xor operator but it happens to be at the very bottom of the precedence priority list , importantly below the humble...
Docker FROM debian:latest
So in my last article I created a Docker container with nothing but a statically compiled helloworld in it. That demonstrated how it’s possible to...
Docker FROM scratch
Docker is a framework which makes it easy to wrap linux applications in “containers” – a sort chroot’d jail but with tools to take away...