The Perl scripting language excels at creating filters and modifying text. This makes it a great choice for document filtering and for tying together text-oriented applications.
- BASIC auto-numbering and labels
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Write BASIC programs without line numbers, and add them later. - Bluetooth battery early warning system
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Use GeekTool, or crontab or launchd and notifications, to know when your bluetooth batteries need recharging. - MySQL for Other Applications
- The basics of working with MySQL for users of other applications such as Dreamweaver, PHP, Perl, or Python.
- Nisus HTML conversion
- New features in Nisus’s scripting language make HTML conversion almost a breeze.
- Nisus “clean HTML” macro
- The Nisus macro language is Perl; this means we can use all of Perl’s strengths as a text filter scripting language in Nisus.
- No premature optimization
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Don’t optimize code before it needs optimization or you’re likely to create unoptimized code. - Perl Cookbook
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This is probably the most useful Perl book I own. Whenever I need a solution quickly--which is often here at the University--I am very likely to find my start in the Perl Cookbook. - Perls Before Swine
- A basic Perl tutorial covering reading files, filtering files, importing into SQL databases, and displaying on the web.
- Perls before Swine Perl tutorial
- I’ve completely revamped my Perl tutorial, and explicitly released it under the Gnu FDL. This tutorial starts from a simple filter that does nothing but echo to the terminal window, and ends with the ability to split data according to fields and import data into a SQLite database.
- Read BASIC out loud
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Reading BASIC out loud is a great tool for verifying that what you’ve typed in from an old-school magazine or book is correct. - Regenerate multiple files
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The “pipewalk” command will regenerate multiple output files from multiple source files, using any arbitrary command that accepts filenames and produces to standard output. - Renumber selected lines of text
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This very short script renumbers lines of text and normalizes on a single tab/space combination in front of each number. - Representing code in HTML
- A minor epiphany that may not be new to others on how to display programming and HTML code in HTML.
- Rolling random levels across a range of experience points in AD&D
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I’m going to North Texas again, and this time I’m going to run an AD&D game for levels 4-6. How can I roll a random number of experience points that will only produce characters of level 4, 5, or 6 regardless of class? - SilverService and Taskpaper
- SilverService is a great little app if you commonly need to repetitiously modify text. Any application that supports services will support running selected text through command-line scripts via SilverService.
- Simple .ics iCalendar file creator
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A simple Perl script to create an ics file from a human-readable text of events. - A simple math pad in Perl
- I finally upgraded to Lion at the office; that means no more Mark Widholm MathPad. I got a simple replacement working using SilverService and Perl.
- Using Term::ANSIColor with GeekTool
- Rather than using the raw codes directly, Perl (at least on OS X) comes with Term::ANSIColor built in.
- Using version control with AppleScripts
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AppleScripts aren’t stored as text, which makes it impossible to track changes in AppleScript files using version control software such as Mercurial or Git.
More Information
- Term::ANSIColor
- “Color screen output using ANSI escape sequences… This module has two interfaces, one through color() and colored() and the other through constants. It also offers the utility functions uncolor(), colorstrip(), and colorvalid(), which have to be explicitly imported to be used.”
- Perl Cookbook•
- This is probably the most useful Perl book I own. Whenever I need a solution quickly—which is often here at the University—I am very likely to find my start in the Perl Cookbook.
- MacPerl
- Matthias Neeracher has ported Perl to the Macintosh, and it is extremely useful—MacPerl is much better than Applescript at munching through text files and folder structures. If you want your programming activities on the Mac to be able to carry over to the Unix world, this is the scripting language to use. Best of all, MacPerl is free. It is also blindingly fast.
