mctext
is a new project of mine, focusing on text generation using Markov Chains. This little utility reads a sample text file, preferably a large one, and generates new text based on the semantics given in the sample text.
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– Using Markov Chains to Generate Text
Delete Unversioned Files Under SVN
Sometimes svn switch
fails because unversion files exist in the working copy, and the need to erase them comes up. This is also true when updating to an old revision (usually one that misses directories that exist in the head revision), doing some work (like compiling), and then trying to update back to the head revision. Subversion (SVN) will fail complaining that directories/files already exist.
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Add Explanation to LaTeX Formulas (Equations)
When writing a document that contains mathematics, many time the need to add an explanation (e.g. stating the theorem used) is raised. To answer this need I wrote two short LaTeX macros: \explain
and \explainup
.
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Convert CSS layout to RTL – cssrtl.py
This is a re-release of a script of mine that helps convert CSS layouts to RTL. I originally released it about a year ago but it was lost when I moved to the new blog. The script, cssrtl.py
, utilizes a bunch of regular expressions to translate a given CSS layout to RTL.
Vim Macros for Wrapping Strings for Gettext
I’m working on a website and we decided to localize it using GNU gettext. Soon enough I found it tiring to wrap each string manually in _(
and )
and also to do it in Smarty (using {t}string{/t}
. So I decided that I need a macro that will let highlight the string that needs translation and the macro will wrap for me.
I ended up writing two macros one for PHP files (but it’s also good for C/C++ etc.) and one for smarty.
:vmap tg di_(<ESC>pa)<ESC> :vmap ts di{t}<ESC>pa{/t}<ESC>
To use these macros just highlight the string for translation in vim’s visual mode and press tg
(or ts
), and your string will be wrapped for translation.
Multibyte String Truncate Modifier for Smarty – mb_truncate
When working with Smarty, a PHP templating engine, I discovered that while the regular truncate
modifier works great on ASCII strings, it doesn’t work with multibyte strings, i.e. UTF-8 encoded strings. This leads to problems in internationalization (i18n), as UTF-8 is the popular encoding for non-Latin alphabets nowdays. The problem can be solved by modifying the built-in truncate
modifier and create a new one that takes an additional argument, the charset of the string, and acts accordingly. The new modified modifier, mb_truncate
is implemented below.
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A JavaScript DOS Attack
In this post I will present a way of creating a JavaScript based DOS attack that utilizes the bad implementation of tabs in most (if not all) web-browsers. The attack will make the browser unresponsive and force the user to kill its process. This attack is based on the following JavaScript code:
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C’s “Goes To” Operator
Well it isn’t really an operator but this is a nice C code construct I ran into. It doesn’t seem to have any benefit except as a nice way to create a reverse loop:
int count = 100;
while (count-->0) {
//some work
}
As I said I don’t think I’ll find any performance benefit for using this code snippet. On the other hand it is always fun to see the puzzled face other programmers have the first time they see the code.
Optimizing for
Loops: Reverse Loops
for
loops are basic language constructs in many languages. One of the first thing to look at when optimizing code is the loops, as they do considerable amounts of work (like going through a very large amount of data), in very little code.
If you go use for
loop, but you don’t really care about the order in which the loop is executed, to be more precise, if you can afford reversing to loop, you can save quite some time. By reversing the loop I mean instead of giving the index values from 0 to 10 for example, you go from 10 downward to zero. This doesn’t seem like a big change, but when being carefully implemented this can easily upgrade the performance of your for
loops.
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Loops: Reverse Loops
Creating Local SVN Repository (Home Repository)
In this tutorial I will explain how to create a local Subversion (SVN) repository, intended for a single user. I assume that you already know the benefits of keeping track of old revision of projects or important documents such as a resume or a thesis you have been writing. Subversion offers you a very convenient yet strong method to do so, and the easiest way to do so with Subversion (SVN) is to create a local, home, repository intended for a single user – you.
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