September 2005
Cameron Laird and Kathryn SoraizThis year, Regular Expressions has frequently commented on the advantages of learning the idioms specific to a particular language. Let's look now at a few underappreciated approaches to parsing that apply to a broad class of languages, and how they might benefit your own development.
Two overdone parsing techniques are yacc and complicated regular expressions (REs). Powerful as they are — the name of this column hints at our appreciation of the latter — they also poorly fit many of the situations where incompletely educated programmers try to apply them. Phaseit just finished a string of several months of consulting with successive clients whose coincidental overreliance on REs made trouble for themselves.
Peter LavinThis summer marks the 10th anniversary of the birth of PHP and, given this fact and the healthy state of PHP, it was a very upbeat conference. Rasmus Lerdorf, the originator of PHP, gave the keynote address and a number of PHP core developers made presentations – often in the same time slot, leaving me wishing I could defy the laws of physics and be in two places at the same time. Ilia Alshanetsky spoke on managing PHP performance, Marcus Böerger talked about the Standard PHP Library, and Derick Rethans and Wez Furlong discussed a variety of topics. There was also a sprinkling of non-PHP Web-related talks.
Ben RothkeLance Armstrong’s autobiography is appropriately titled It’s Not About the Bike. A bike to a cyclist is a tool, and the tool is only as good as the one using it. Obviously, Armstrong’s multiple wins at the Tour de France are due in part to his excellent bike, but that was secondary to his superb training, conditioning, and riding skills.
If an information security champion were to write a book, an appropriate title would be It’s Not About the Hardware and Software. Effective information security stems from well-trained staff combined with effective policies, where hardware and software are secondary. Yet there is a widespread perception within information technology that the more security products you buy, the more security you have. If only it were that easy.
Ben RothkeBrute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard is the story of the life and death of DES (data encryption standard). In the early 1970s, the U.S. government put out an open call for a new, stronger encryption algorithm that would be made into a federal standard, known as FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard.). Numerous solutions were submitted as the DES candidate, including one from IBM. The IBM solution, originally called Lucifer, was chosen to be used as the encryption algorithm. After that, it became known as DES.
Emmett DulaneyI immediately liked Mobile IP Technology and Applications. At approximately 300 pages, it throws out all filler and focuses strictly on the task at hand: in this case, the marriage between the Internet and mobile communications as it relates to Mobile IP.
Reinhard VoglmaierThe Perl programming language is one of the most well-known languages in the Unix World. It is becoming increasingly popular also in Microsoft and Mac environments, and also offers libraries tailored for these operating systems.
Marcel GagnéIf you asked a number of people (who know nothing about computers) to walk around and look over people's shoulders to discover the most popular computer application, they might be tempted to say "cards", specifically solitaire. I'm not saying people aren't working hard — in fact, I'm advocating that people are working too hard — it's just that seeing an idle PC with a game of solitaire displayed prominently has been one of the most common sites on business computers over the years. On a related note, the fact that's it's plain old solitaire that you see says a lot about how boring that other OS is when it comes to a decent game of cards.
Ed SchaeferEd Schaefer reviews this updated version of Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment.
Emmett DulaneyWeighing in at 900 pages and 2 ¼" thick, this book dwarfs many on the shelf. My first thought when I saw it was why does it need to be so big? In a day and age when every effort is being made to make administration as simple as possible (witness the YaST interface in SUSE), what does it mean when we still need a book this large? It is impractical for carrying about and would constitute luggage that must be checked on many flights.
Ed SchaeferIf you like shell scripting books with a ton of examples, like Taylor's Wicked Cool Shell Scripts or Michael's Mastering Shell Scripting, you are going to love Chris F. A. Johnson's Shell Scripting Recipes. The author provides more than just a glimpse at shell scripting; in 108 example scripts, Johnson demonstrates what a competent, experienced shell programmer can do.
Emmett DulaneyWhat follows are questions that I’ve asked and the answers that I've received from three people in various IT fields.
Ed Schaefer, Michael Wang and Julie WangThis month, Julie Wang and Michael Wang weigh in with five date-related shell functions based on the unix cal calendar command.
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