SCOUG-General Mailing List Archives

Date:	Sat, 19 Jan 2002 23:19:36 PST7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-general@scoug.com
To:	scoug-general@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-General: SCOUG meeting gets A+

Content Type: text/plain

That was a great meeting!

The APL programming language presentation by "Denny" was excellent.
It's been quite a few years since I used APL and I didn't know about the
Auxiliary Processor (AP) libraries. If I had known about the AP's then
I certainly would have spent more time with APL because they quickly get
your data off the disk and get your graphics onto the screen (even
images, if you want to do your own edge sharpening or color mapping).
Let's face it, a programmer's job is to "get the job done!", and APL is
one of the best tools when there are numbers involved. Managers too
should know about APL -- after all, it's their job to make sure that the
programming projects come in on time and within budget, and sometimes
APL is the tool that actually allows somebody to accomplish this feat.

And Greg's presentation on SED (a utility) and AWK (a text processing
language) was also top notch. If you program in Rexx or even if you
just write .cmd command files, you should definitely consider adding
these tools to your workspace. SED and AWK are fast ways to get your
processing done when your data is in text files. Greg had a very simple
demonstration of their speed and power -- he reorganised his
presentation and created his on-screen "slides" by quickly processing
his outline. (And he didn't use Rexx. I love it.) These two programs
are quite powerful and you should be using them to summarize your log
files, firewall reports, catalog your .cmd files, verify what's in your
CONFIG.SYS file, check your CONFIG.SYS contents between different boot
partitions or machines, convert reports you create to HTML for web pages
(Greg showed how to do this during his presentation), timeslip billing
reports, process print-to-text files, anything that's a text file can be
quickly and easily handled with SED and AWK.

The SCOUG CD Of The Month contains the newly-released sources and
executables for Carrick von Schoultz's PM Virtual Desktop and PM Snap
programs. If you picked up a copy, try these out *and* take a look at
the source code. The source is now "open" (thanks Carrick) so that
others may learn from Carrick's work and make modifications as they
wish.

- Peter

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