/dev/chat

forest

12:18 AM

(speaking of "haha" in regards to DragonflyBSD: gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/commit/…)

Not that I mean to bash it as an OS. DragonflyBSD is awesome. They're just really behind.

Faheem Mitha

9:36 AM

@forest Really behind what?

forest

Well, they only added NX a few years ago (hence that link). And they've been saying HAMMER2 will be out any day now for how many decades?

It's a great OS, but the development is slow and they really don't care about feature parity.

Andras Deak

10:35 AM

What's NX?

forest

It's a CPU feature that allows pages in memory to be marked as read-only.

It stands for "no-execute". On Windows, that feature is called DEP (Data Execution Prevention).

It's one of those really, really, really basic security features that no one has an excuse not to use.

So when an OS implements support for it in 2017, it's odd. Even in 2007 it would be odd.

Faheem Mitha

When I write console output to a file, it looks like this.

> ^[[0;33mfile 'foo' was deleted in local [working-copy] but was modified in other [shelve].^[[0m
^[[0;33mYou can use (c)hanged version, leave (d)eleted, or leave (u)nresolved.^[[0m
^[[0;33mWhat do you want to do?^[[0m u
^[[0;31munresolved conflicts (see 'hg resolve', then 'hg unshelve --continue')^[[0m

What is ^[[0;33m and ^[[0m?

@forest And what's HAMMER2?

A search suggests they might be color codes. But why are they showing up in ASCII output?

forest

A filesystem for DragonflyBSD.

"year of the HAMMER2 filesystem" is like saying "year of the Hurd desktop" :P

Faheem Mitha

@forest Presumably it has multiple filesystems.

forest

Well yeah but that's their in-house filesystem, like ZFS was for Solaris (?)

Lots of features, very powerful, but it's bordering on vaporware.

Archemar

10:48 AM

@FaheemMitha that's coloring code, [0;33m for third colour, [0m to turn off

Faheem Mitha

@Archemar Oh. Yes, those lines are actually colored.

Is there some way to turn this off inside the script?

forest

Some programs turn of coloring when output is to a pipe and not stdout.

Archemar

If you find a way, let me know I've been searching for ages

forest

I mean, you could certainly do it with sed.

Faheem Mitha

@forest I was just using ./shelveinterrupt.exp &> shelveinterrupt.out

@Archemar In that case, sounds like a question for the site.

It seems like something one could switch off with a suitable env variable setting.

Jeff Schaller

11:08 AM

2

A: Convert tty terminal output to plain text

You could try setting TERM=dumb, which might work — if wineconsole does not insist on making a full-screen display. If not, as noted, script is part of the solution. That lets you run your program, transparently collecting all of the data sent to the screen in a text file. Making sense of it i...

try setting TERM and/or using Thomas' script2log ("Strips ANSI escape sequences and reduces backspace/overstrikes") script

also:

3

Q: How to clean stdout/stderr color output

I have a program that would output something like this: ^[0;33m"2015-02-09 11:42:36 +0700 114.125.x.x access"^[0m Is there built in linux program that could clean that output up into something like this "2015-02-09 11:42:36 +0700 114.125.x.x access"

Faheem Mitha

11:27 AM

@JeffSchaller dumb is probably overkill, and will not end well.

Stephen Kitt

@FaheemMitha it would ensure that a properly-written program wouldn’t emit any ANSI escapes, isn’t that the goal?

Faheem Mitha

@JeffSchaller Time to eat my words, because it works perfectly. Perhaps with some relish or pickle.

jesse_b

11:53 AM

The woodpecker is relentless this year. Every morning for weeks he has been up there hammering away at my chimney and he does it for hours straight

This one is not nearly as loud as the one from last year though so you can only really hear it in my living room

Stephen Kitt

What does the chimney make of it?

jesse_b

It doesn't do any damage, apparently they just like to beat on metal chimneys to emit a loud sound letting other woodpeckers in the area know this is their territory

Stephen Kitt

Ah right! A variant of certain bird calls...

jesse_b

Maybe I can get one of those realistic owl statues to put up there

Stephen Kitt

This year we have families of blackbirds, red robins, and sparrows in our hedges, with magpies regularly pestering them. We also have a pair of turtle doves trying to build a nest but so far they haven’t been very successful (even though their nest from last year is still there); they keep trying to build a nest on top of electric wires which isn’t very successful.

The other day I saw daddy blackbird fighting with a cat; the blackbird won!

jesse_b

11:58 AM

hah that's impressive

Stephen Kitt

I think the cat finally realised it was going to lose an eye at least...

Another cat in the neighbourhood did lose an eye recently, but to a seagull.

(We live 200 miles from the sea but the gulls don’t know that.)

jesse_b

Yeah I live in colorado and I have seen birds which I'm sure are not technically seagulls but they look exactly like them

denverite.com/2020/01/21/…

Faheem Mitha

You all have much more interesting wildlife than we do here. Here it's mostly crows and pigeons. Maybe some green parrots.

jesse_b

@FaheemMitha crows and parrots are about as interesting as birds get

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b I detest crows, personally. And the parrots are not very visible. They tend to hide in the trees. Which are also green, so you can't see them clearly.

Stephen Kitt

12:30 PM

Crows are really clever

Jeff Schaller

1:00 PM

@FaheemMitha if the script behaves like forest indicated, then a simpler solution might be something like ./shelveinterrupt.exp 2>&1 | cat > shelveinterrupt.out ## untested

either way, I'd recommend a comment in the script that explains why you did that. just for your future self. maybe the next version no longer emits color codes at all.

Faheem Mitha

1:32 PM

@StephenKitt They're aggressive and kind of creepy.

Also they attack smaller birds. That's all true of the Indian variety, at least.

@JeffSchaller Good tip. Comments/documentation is always good.

Also, they sound awful.

Stephen Kitt

@FaheemMitha yes, all larger birds attack smaller birds if they get the chance, even pigeons

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt Oh.

Stephen Kitt

pigeons, turtle doves etc. are mostly OK around smaller birds, but magpies, seagulls etc. will at least fight with them for food, if not outright attack them

magpies eat other birds’ eggs too

jesse_b

I often see crows harassing hawks which is pretty neat

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt Are you an ornithologist?

Stephen Kitt

1:47 PM

@FaheemMitha I read up on the birds I see in my garden, and since I work from home I see quite a lot of bird activity

it’s nesting season just now so things are really busy

Prabhjot Singh

@Kusalananda Thanks to you for this.

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt I see. You have a proper garden?

Stephen Kitt

@FaheemMitha much smaller than Jesse’s yard or Jeff’s, but big enough to host an interesting amount of wildlife (birds, lizards, a hedgehog, snails, many insects...).

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt That's nice. Do you have pictures?

I just have a small balcony with pots.

Stephen Kitt

2:03 PM

@FaheemMitha I’ll post some later ;-)

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt OK

Andras Deak

@StephenKitt hedgehog <3

Stephen Kitt

@AndrasDeak yeah they’re cool :-)

Andras Deak

Are you near Europe?

Very similar fauna

Stephen Kitt

@AndrasDeak South-Eastern France

Andras Deak

2:09 PM

About a year ago I learned that USians don't have hedgies

@StephenKitt neat

Stephen Kitt

@AndrasDeak wait what? O_O

Andras Deak

Yup. Opossums for hedgehogs. By the laws of the ancients.

Stephen Kitt

wow

Hedgehog

A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introduction. There are no hedgehogs native to Australia and no living species native to the Americas (the extinct genus Amphechinus was once present in North America). Hedgehogs share distant ancestry with shrews (family Soricidae), with gymnures possibly being the intermediate link, and they have changed little over the last 15 million years. Like many of the first...

TIL

Faheem Mitha

Huh. The Americas don't have hedgehogs?

I've mostly come across them in English fiction. I don't think I've ever actually seen one.

They're quite popular in English children fiction.

Andras Deak

Odds are then you also have a lot of more exotic birds that are harder to stop. Based on our own fauna: redstarts, various kinds of woodpeckers (<3 European green woodpecker; sorry jesse), long-tailed tits, goldfinches, greenfinches etc.

@FaheemMitha they're adorable

Faheem Mitha

2:17 PM

@AndrasDeak Have you met some, then?

Stephen Kitt

@AndrasDeak we see blue tits, thrushes and swallows fairly regularly, the odd owl, but no woodpeckers

Andras Deak

@FaheemMitha yeah, lots

@AndrasDeak s/stop/spot

@FaheemMitha they are common and hard to miss. They huff and puff like steam engines, and march through the undergrowth with the grace of AT/ATs.

jesse_b

2:36 PM

@AndrasDeak Yeah my woodpeckers are lame, they don't even look cool they just look like generic birds

Faheem Mitha

4:06 PM

@AndrasDeak AT/ATs?

Jeff Schaller

Walker (Star Wars)

All Terrain Walkers are armoured fighting vehicles from the Star Wars universe that traverse the landscape on mechanical legs. They are used by the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, and the First Order for ground assault, reconnaissance or transport. Throughout the saga walkers have played a pivotal role in the fate of characters and the outcome of battles. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) is responsible for their animation and design, often using models, stop-motion animation, and relevant matte paintings to depict their presence in the films. There are a variety of walkers: The Empire Strikes...

jesse_b

We don't have hedgehogs but I do have a very fat, presumably pregnant squirrel in my back yard that has lost it's tail and it looks pretty adorable

I've seen it probably a dozen times now and it still invokes a double take each time because it doesn't look like a squirrel at all without the tail

Faheem Mitha

5:09 PM

Good grief. A Star Wars reference.

jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Is that a charlie brown reference?

Andras Deak

barley chown

Faheem Mitha

5:34 PM

@jesse_b Not really.

Coincidentally, I had just started rewatching "The Force Awakens" to see if it was as dreadful as I remembered.

Andras Deak

it's a decent remake

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak Decent remake of what?

terdon

@FaheemMitha A New Hope.

It's basically exactly the same story.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Ah.

When I saw it I thought it was Disneyfied crap. It's been a while.

I've not watched any of the other Disney sequels.

jesse_b

5:53 PM

anyone want two cats?

One of them throws up obnoxiously large amounts of disgusting vomit pretty much daily in random parts of the house and the other gets poop stuck to his butt and then drags it around the house like some sort of a demonic defecation snail

Andras Deak

Plot twist: it's the same one fat cat

jesse_b

the vomiting one is fat, he's a mane coon mix

Andras Deak

maine coon, but oooh pretty

jesse_b

he also needs medication applied to his inner ear twice a day

Stephen Kitt

someone else was recently trying to get rid of cats

-4

Q: How might one implement cat with sed?

I'm considering removal from /usr/bin/ of Ubuntu 20.04 on my Laptop such utilities as like cat, head, tail, and wc in order to force myself to get more experience with sed and awk and to learn these two really well . How might I implement cat with sed as a one-liner to be used interactively (from...

sed cat

jesse_b

5:57 PM

I would like to get rid of my cats but I would never advocate removing their head and tail!

Andras Deak

@jesse_b I hope you named the poop cat Sharpie

jesse_b

@AndrasDeak rupert

He's actually the better of the two. They are both just old, but rupert is pretty healthy otherwise. The other guy is costing me a fortune in vet fees too because he has thyroid issues and needs to be checked all the time. We got him from some lady who I imagine knew all of his medical issues but acted like she didn't. He had belonged to her father who passed away and she claimed her husband "demanded they get rid of him" despite the fact that they had about 3 other cats

Andras Deak

sus

jesse_b

He makes noises that sound eerily human right before he throws up and it scares the hell out of me every time

Stephen Kitt

My refrigerator’s compressor sometimes sounds like it’s calling for “Mummy”

jesse_b

6:04 PM

The couple we got him from looked pretty well off too, they lived in a house about twice the size of mine in a nice neighborhood and had about 3 brand new german cars

Stephen Kitt

which is very weird at 4am

Faheem Mitha

So I have a LuaTeX file which pauses for approximately 40 seconds in the middle of the compilation for no apparent reason (I just timed it). I've been meaning to track this down for a while now, though I didn't realise it was so long.

jesse_b

hah

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt I try not to sleep in the same room as a fridge. The noises they make bother me.

And I'm a terrible sleeper at the best of times.

jesse_b

If you don't have a refrigerator in your bedroom how do you get your morning beer?

Stephen Kitt

6:06 PM

I don’t sleep in the same room as the refrigerator, but sometimes I wake up at night and hear it

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b I don't drink beer. Well, occasionally. The last time was December 2018. Around the time my mother died. Assuming you're asking me.

@StephenKitt That's a loud fridge.

jesse_b

Supposedly the air is less dense (?) at night which allows you to hear things better

plus the fact that there is typically much less ambient noise

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b Less noise, sure. The other thing sounds nutty.

jesse_b

6

A: Why do we hear better during the night?

My high school physics teacher was saying that “this is because of interference of sound waves. During the day, there are a lot of sounds and they cancel each other due to interference. But, during the night, there are few sounds and they can reach to our ears without canceling each other”. ...

Faheem Mitha

Any strategies for figuring out where a LuaTeX file is pausing?

Though perhaps I'm not asking in the right place.

@jesse_b Huh.

jesse_b

6:11 PM

something about temperature and curves

Andras Deak

@FaheemMitha pausing how?

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak Well, the compilation messages just stop. It just sits there. Then it starts again.

I assume it's doing something in the meanwhile, but I don't know what.

I guess I could turn on tracing.

Andras Deak

Is the source latex compatible?

Faheem Mitha

It's not a super complicated file, but it is using my custom Lua code, which could easily be buggy.

@AndrasDeak I'm not sure what you are asking. It's a LaTeX file.

Andras Deak

If it has no lua then run it through latex/pdflatex

@FaheemMitha so no, not latex compatible

Faheem Mitha

6:16 PM

@AndrasDeak It does have Lua.

@AndrasDeak I'm not sure what you are saying. It's a LuaLaTeX file.

So yes, it's LaTeX. Using Lua doesn't alter that.

If you mean is it a PDFLaTeX file, then no.

jesse_b

If I didn't know any better I would suspect you all of making up words

Andras Deak

@FaheemMitha if you run latex your_file.tex and it breaks then it's not latex in my book

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak Ah. That's incorrect.

Andras Deak

not just latex, anyway

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak LaTeX is a format. You're confusing engines and formats. They're different things.

Anyway, trying that trusty fallback, print statements.

Debuggers be damned. That's usually how I debug stuff.

Plus TeX doesn't have debuggers. Bugger.

jesse_b

6:19 PM

that does sound flawed. I'm sure something can be bad latex but saying it is not latex at all would be borderline no true scotsman

if you typo some c code and it fails to compile does that mean it is no longer c code?

philosoraptor.jpg

Andras Deak

@jesse_b is typescript true javascript? Is bash true sh? If you define a superset of a language that no longer runs in the base, it's non-trivial to call it code of the base language. But it's possible that in the latex world lualatex is latex, I'm not much of an expert there.

(yes, I'm sure bash is not a superset of sh :P)

I'm just low on accessible examples to make my point

gawk and awk!

jesse_b

I don't really know anything about latex. I was just imagining Faheem's file fails latex file.tex because it has bugs in it and not fundamentally

Andras Deak

@jesse_b no, it's both

lualatex augments latex with lua the scripting(?) language. The vanilla latex engine doesn't know how to run lua. But then Faheem has a bug which makes lualatex stall.

@FaheemMitha because "my custom lua code" does sound like the first place where you should look for a bug. Maybe an infinite loop.

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak The file compiles correctly, so it isn't an infinite loop.

Andras Deak

7:00 PM

@jesse_b OK, so imagine that I have an awk script that uses strtonum(). According to man gawk -> "GNU EXTENSIONS" this will run on gawk (which is my awk), but POSIX awk (or gawk in --traditional mode) will error out. Is this a bug in my awk code, or is the code not entirely awk?

Faheem Mitha

OK, I've got a technical question. I'm trying to mark where the compllation pauses in the log file. I tried adding it manually to the log file during the pause, but it disappeared.

Suggestions how I could do this?

Andras Deak

copy the log to another name at that point?

then the pipe from the compiler won't step on your toes

Or even just check the length of the log file. Beware of buffering though.

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak Oh, that's a good idea. I didn't think of that.

Funny, the stuff that appears on the screen and in the log file at that point are not the same.

I guess that's buffering?

Andras Deak

possibly

jesse_b