these days I was encountering a problem, when I was going through 2 veeeeeeery big hashes to find out which of them have similar keys (not really same keys, just slightly different). I thought, that the easiest way would be to go through both hashes in 2 for-loops and check them out one by one. Unfortunately, this approach took about 2 minutes to go through (2 minutes seem like an eternity if you are staring at a terminal).

My first approach looked like this:

for my $a (keys %b) {
    for my $c (keys %d) {
        if ($c =~ m/^$a.+$/) {
            print "bingo!\n";
        }
    }
}

You see, the keys in the second hash (%d) always look like the keys in the first hash (%b) with the only difference, that they contain the key plus some other stuff. So if $a looks like “abc”, $c looks like “abc123″. Now, if you have 2 hashes with – let’s say – 5000 keys and values, you can easily calculate how long this could take…. (5000 x 5000 = 25.000.000) … as I already said: it takes FOREVER!

Now, after some searching around I found a very nice solution on the Linux and Unix Forums from a guy called “pludi”. He recommended a grep-approach. Here is now my remodelled version:

for my $a (keys %b) {
    for my $c (grep { /^$a.+$/ } keys %d) {
        print "bingo!\n";
    }
}

Voila. Instead of taking 2 minutes, the loop now runs through in 15 seconds. I love Perl

You can get it on their website.

I guess I will write some programs soon to see what’s possible. The only thing that sucks on the milestone is, that the dollar sign is only available via touchpad. That’s REALLY annoying. :/

you call the script like this:

$ ./oebbquery "Innsbruck Hbf" "Wörgl Hbf"
Connections from Innsbruck Hbf to Wörgl Hbf:
 
Departure  Arrival  Duration  Changes  Train(s)
15:13      15:59     0:46     0        rex 
15:28      16:24     0:56     0        s 
15:54      16:28     0:34     0        oec

Please be sure to use the correct names of the stations. for example: “wörgl” doesn’t work, but “Wörgl Hbf” works. You have to use the names provided by the oebb-website.

the output looks now like this:

have fun!

I just spent 2 hours on a little project here. With this little script written in Perl by using LWP you now have the possibility to view train-connections from A to B in your terminal. You can then use this output to process it with conky or just any application you want. Here is a screenshot:

As you can see, i used it to display it with conky by executing it once every 600 seconds.

As soon as I have cleaned up the code to make it easier to read, you can download it here.

Here is the link to the website:
calcurse

I’m using it as my primary calendar application to get an overview of my daily tasks and events.

Here a screenshot of me entering my university lessons :

entering stuff in calcurse

in near future you’ll see more articles because I decided to quit my current job and start to study biology .

I’m going to do my job until 23th of September.

some days ago I decided to write a little simulation in Perl. Well, … here is the result (huntersim-0.1). The package contains a README where everything should be explained.

Have FUN!

UPDATE:

Because people want to see pics:

To remind my readers (me, me … and me) about this incredibly important event, I’ll put this picture on top of the blog.

Well, everything works now. I’m currently playing around with motion, a nice tool for capturing pictures from a webcam.

Have a nice day!