Doing actions upon changes of files and directories is very useful. Examples like compiling a project after the source code files are changed, sending emails after important configuration files are modified, building the PDF after a TeX file is modified. On Linux, the inotify-tools provide good support for trigger actions after changes. In this post,
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Category: Programming
Tutorials and tips on programming related to Linux systems, Web and more.
How to Get Available Filesystem Space on Linux: a C Function with a C++ Example
Posted onIt is common for programs to write to files in filesystems on disks. However, what if the disk was almost full when your program writes to the filesystem on a disk? For systems software and mission critical programs, it is a better or must-to-do practice to check the available filesystem space before actually writing to
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Profiling Vim to Find Out Which Plugin Makes Vim Slow
Posted onVim is pretty fast and powerful. However, the core of Vim is (yet) single-threaded (some discussions and tries on porting Vim to be multi-threading, but not yet there). This means some functions that are slow will block Vim there and you have to wait for it. While Vim is fast, some plugins are not. When
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Fetching RSS Feed and Outputing Feed Items as HTML in PHP
Posted onIt is useful to show the feed items directly on the webpage as HTML content. In this ost, we will show one single PHP function that fetches an RSS feed and outputs the feed items as HTML elements in the web page. One example to fetch an RSS feed and output the itmes as HTML
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Creating a Child Process using posix_spawn in C in Linux
Posted onThe posix_spawn() and posix_spawnp() functions create a new child process from the specified process image constructed from a regular executable file. It can be used to replace the relative complex "fork-exec-wait" methods with fork() and exec(). However, compared to fork() and exec(), posix_spawn() is less introduced if you search on the Web. The posix_spawn() manual
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Keyboard Key Mapping for Emacs: Evil Mode and Rearranging Alt, Ctrl and Win Keys
Posted onCtrl keys are important and possibly most frequently used in Emacs. However, it is painful on today’s common PC keyboards since Ctrl keys are usually in the corner of the keyboard main area. Why the key mappings in Emacs are designed like this? After it was designed, Emacs was commonly on the Lisp Machine keyboards
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Git Merging FAQs
Posted ongit merge is frequently used during development of projects managed by git. There are many common questions about git merge and I find most are solved and discussed on StackOverflow. Here, I summarize useful ones so that others who want to learn git merge need to do the search again. Merge, rebase, fast forward and
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Cheatsheet: Git Branching with a Git Server
Posted onIt is common to set up git servers to host git repositories. Branching is lightweight in git and a very friendly mechanism to manage code. Here, I summarize a cheatsheet of common git branching commands for working on repositories from a git server. This post assumes that you have basic knowledge with git. If you
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How to Catch the Signal Sent by Kill in C on Linux
Posted onPrograms may want to catch the kill signals sent by the kill command in C programs on Linux so that it can gracefully shutdown itself before it is killed. For example, I have a daemon progd running, and it may be killed by pkill progd. The progd may want to save some in-memory state to
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Git through SSH Tunnel as Proxy
Posted ongit is a great tool and it is common to have a git server over SSH possibly managed by gitolite. However, there are situations that we can not directly connect to the git server but be able to SSH to another node that can connect to the git server. The git server may allow only
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Vim Howtos and Tips
Posted onVim is a fast and handy editor on *nix systems. Like Emacs, Vim has a steep learning curve as you get constantly get new things. However, the effort deserves it as you efficiency is highly improved. Here, I summarize the tips and howtos I learned using Vim. Some previous posts on vim are tagged with
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RAII-like Error Handling and Resource Management in C
Posted onError handling and resource management are pervasive in programs. RAII originated in C++ is great. With RAII, it is much easier to write easy-to-read code that allocats/deallocats resources in the constructor/destructors. By representing a resource with a local object, we are sure that local object’s destructor will release the resource and will not forget to
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How to Statically Link C and C++ Programs on Linux with gcc
Posted onBefore statically linking you C and C++ programs, you should be aware of the drawbacks of the static linking especially with glibc. There are some good discussions already: with glibc you’re linking static programs which are not really static and some others here and here. That said, you can choose to statically link C and
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Auto Indenting for OCaml Code in Vim with ocp-indent
Posted onThe built-in indenting in Vim for OCaml seems not very good. How to set up auto indenting for OCaml code in Vim? ocp-indent works very well for me. This posts introduces how to configure Vim to use ocp-indent to automatically indent/format OCaml code. First, install ocp-indent after installing opam: $ opam install ocp-indent Second, configure
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Linux UDP Programming Tutorial
Posted onUDP has its advantages over TCP, such as being relatively lightweight and receiving one packet per read call (recvmsg), although the programmers need to handle related issues, such as packet lost and out-of-order packets delivery. This post gives information and references on how to write UDP programs in a C/Linux environment. What is UDP Check
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How to Measure Time Accurately in Programs
Posted onIt is quite common to measure the time in programs using APIs like clock() and gettimeofday(). We may also want to measure the time "accurately" for certain purposes, such as measuring a small piece of code’s execution time for performance analysis, or measuring the time in time-sensitive game software. It is hard to measure the
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ASCII Table and ASCII Code
Posted onThis post gives the ASCII table and ASCII code with ASCII control characters and ASCII printable characters and a tool to convert ASCII codes to ASCII characters. Introduction to ASCII table and ASCII code ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. An ASCII code is the numerical representation of a character since computers
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C++ Reference and Styles
Posted onC++ References Reference of the C++ Language Library, with detailed descriptions of its elements and examples on how to use its functions: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ C++ reference: http://www.cppreference.com/w/ C++ Styles I compile a list of C++ styles on the Internet. http://geosoft.no/development/cppstyle.html http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_02/C%2B%2B_Style_Guide_v007.html http://www.cs.uga.edu/~dkl/1302/Fall99/style.html
Java与C++在语言方面上的不同
Posted on1，Java抛弃了头文件、预处理机制、goto语句和多维数组。 2，Java不支持指针。 3，Java抛弃了联合体和结构体。 4，Java不支持独立函数。所有函数必须在类中声明。 5，Java不支持多重继承，可以使用接口模拟多重继承。 6，Java不支持运算符重载。 7，Java中布尔型不再用整数来代替。 8，Java中主函数必须有一个字符串类型的参数。 Java抛弃的C++中的这些机制和结构多数都是“危险”的，减少了语言的复杂性，增强了安全性，虽然在一定程度上减少了其灵活性。
Makefile Tutorials
Posted onMake is a utility that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. Make is widely used, especially in Unix/Linux world. More introductions to Make and it’s history can be found on Wikipedia. In this post, I list articles for Makefile
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