Here are some basics about Perl hashes that can be helpful to be used when an you need to associate a label with some value such as for names and telephone numbers or account numbers with amounts owed.

Create a hash variable.

my %hashvar;

Create a hash reference

my $refhash = {};

Add a value to a hash variable.

$hashvar{'somekey'} = 'someval';

Add a value to a hash reference.

$hashref->{'somekey'} = 'someotherval';

Access a value in a hash.

print $hashvar{'somekey'};

Access a value in a hash reference.

print $hashref->{'somekey}';

Access all Keys in a hash variable.
foreach my $k (keys(%hashvar))
{
print $hashvar{$k};
}

Access all Keys in a hash reference.

foreach my $k (keys(%$hashref))
{
  print $k . "n";
}

Access all Keys and values in a hash.

while (my ($key,$value) = each %hashvar)
{
  print "Key: " . $key . " has value:" . $value . "n";
}

Access all Keys and values in a hash.

while (my ($key,$value) = each %$refhash)
{
  print "Key: " . $key . " has value:" . $value . "n";
}

Assigning multiple values to a hash

%hasvar = (
  'test2' => 'myval',
  'test3' => 'myval3'
);

Note: This will clear the existing hash.

Delete a value from a hash

delete $hashvar{'key1'};

Delete a value from a hash reference.

delete $hashref->{'key1'};

Tags: hash, perl, scripting, Utilities

I use perl arrays in some of my programs, and just started to look at the regular things that I do with these arrays and thought it would be useful to keep a list of frequently used items.

Create a variable specified as an array.

my @vararray

Add an item to the beginning of an array

unshift (@vararray, "File2");

Add an item to the end of an array

push (@vararray, "File1");

Remove an item from the beginning of an array

my $var = shift(@array);

Remove an item from the end of an array

pop(@array)

Clear an array

@vararray = ();

Address an item in an array

print $vararray[0] ; 

Get the size of an array

my $arraysize = @array;

Remove an item based on the index

delete @vararray[1];

Iterate over an array

foreach my $var (@vararay)
{
  print "$var n";
}
 
# or 
my $size = @vararray;
my $i;
for ($i = 0 ; $i < @size; $i++)
{
  print "$vararray[$i]n";
}

Tags: array, perl, scripting

I was asked about system utilization on Linux systems. I found thesystatset of tools which consist of: sar, sadf, mpstat, iostat, nfsiostat, cifsiostat, pidstat and sa tools.

I will talk about the iostat tool in this article and follow up about some of the other tools.

On Ubuntu or debian systems you can install this toolset with:

sudo apt-get install sysstat

Then you will have access to the iostat command. The command output from executing with no options is below:

# iostat
Linux 2.6.32-33-generic (sumo)  09/01/2011      _i686_  (2 CPU)

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           0.11    0.00    0.47    0.01    0.00   99.41

Device:            tps   Blk_read/s   Blk_wrtn/s   Blk_read   Blk_wrtn
sda               0.54         1.85         8.91    1611385    7740024

This displays the avg-cpu utilization and a device usage list with basic utilization.
Some options you can use are

Option	Explanation
-c	Display CPU utilization only
-d	Display Device utilization only
-k	Display information in kilobytes
-m	Display information in megabytes
-t	Display time for each report
-x	Display extended statistics

One more way to use the iostat tool is to specify an interval and count to the command

iostat -d -x 10 5

This will display the output 5 more times with 10 seconds between each run.

Tags: Linux, system tools, utilization

When I was trying to terminate a python script after a failure, I tried to find the nicest way to exit. The sys.exit() command provided by importing the sys library was what I found.

The function can take an optional numeric argument, usually in the range of 0-127, and with no argument it returns 0. The return code is passed back to the Operating System.

import sys
sys.exit(1)

When exit returns a non-zero value, it is considered an error.

Tags: Python

When you need to do some processing in bash and display if a file exists, the following is a simple script that takes the filename in the $testfile variable and reports if it exists or not.

if [ -f $testfile ]
then
  echo $testfile exists!
else
  echo $testfile does not exist
fi

I regularly have to find where a file is located and usually use find:

find . | grep 

Where is replaced with the filename or partial name to match. So I finally decided to write a script to just run this and allow me to print the matching names and even potentially pass the -i flag to grep.

#!/bin/sh


if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
  echo 1>&2 Usage: $0 ""
  exit 127
fi
icase=

while [ $# -ge 1 ]; do
   case $1 in
     -i)  icase=$1;;
      *)  search=$1 ;;
   esac
   shift
done

find .  | grep $icase $search

This is just a simple script which I have named ffind that searches starting from the current directory. This lets me search with the following commands:

ffind bak$

This will search for all files that end with “bak” .

ffind -i edr

This will search for all files with “edr” regardless of case

Tags: find, Linux, scripting, Shell, Utilities

I have been searching through source code and files for years. And I used to use find with a few arguments to get what I was looking for.

find . -exec grep  {} ; -print

I used the -print after the exec arguments to show the file only when the grep succeeded.  This worked but was a bit to type each time I used it. So I came up with a little script that would help me to search for the an argument and even allow a case insensitive search as well.
 

#!/bin/sh

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
  echo 1>&2 Usage: $0 ""
  exit 127
fi
icase=
search=

while [ $# -ge 1 ]; do
  case $1 in 
     -i) icase=$1;;
      *) search=$1 ;;
  esac
  shift
done

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep $icase $search

The script takes at least one argument and excepts a ‘-i’ argument to make grep use a case insensitive search. This will print the file name and the line that matches the search term. It can be easily adapted to show the count of matched patterns (‘-c’) or the line number (‘-n’).

Tags: find, scripting, Shell, Utilities

I need to write custom Perl libraries sometimes and an easy method to make sure that they are found on the path is to use the PERL5LIB environment variable.

So either set it in your current environment or in a shell you can just specify the contents before you run your script.

PERL5LIB=/PATH/WHERE/LIB/IS perl scripttorun.pl 

Tags: perl, scripting

Sometimes it is necessary to install other modules into the Perl environment. Luckily there is a great repository of modules known as CPAN (The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). This lets you install modules to help with encryption, XML,YAML, and many other things. There are a few ways to install a package and here are the ones that I use the most.

Using the CPAN shell:

perl -MCPAN -e shell

This will open a command prompt that will let you search for CPAN modules with:

i /PACKAGENAME/

or install a new module:

install /DateTime/

The nice thing about installing with CPAN is that it will look for the dependencies and suggest installing them before the module you requested.

NOTE:This can take some time and your dependencies could have dependencies.

The other method I use is to skip the CPAN prompt and just directly execute the install of the module:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install DateTime'

This is just the most basic of usage, and there is probably a lot more you can do, but I have not had to use much more than this.

Tags: perl, Programming, scripting

Here is a list of the Hello World Programs for different languages:

C

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello World!");
}

C++

#include <iostream.h>
int main()
{
cout << "Hello World!" << endl;
}

C#

public class HelloWorld
  public static void Main()
  {
    System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
  }

Java

class HelloWorld {
static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Hello World!");
}

SHELL

echo "Hello World"

Python 2

print "Hello World!\n"

Python 3

print ("Hello World!")

Ruby

puts "Hello World!"

Perl

print "Hello World!n";

PHP

  <?php      
    print "Hello World!";
  ?>

Rust

fn main() {
    println("Hello World!");
}

This is the simplest form of Hello World for most of these languages.

Tags: C, Java, perl, PHP, Programming, Python, Ruby, Shell