Tag Archives: text file

The Blessing of Unicode

15 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by in CS101

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Computers process numbers using arithmetic and logic (which amount to the same thing). Processing text, however, requires at least two levels of abstraction. Firstly, a definition of a textual atom — informally a character. Secondly, a definition of a textual unit — typically called a string. A string is an ordered list of characters.

Therein lies a whole field of computer science. From a practical point of view, implementing text has become much easier with Unicode. Different character sets was one of the more awful aspects of dealing with text. (Remember CP-1252?)

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Tabs or Spaces?

19 Tuesday Oct 2021

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There are many issues that divide programmers: operating systems and editors being two huge ones. I’ve worked on too many platforms to care much about the first one, but I’m a lifelong gvim user.

One of the lesser dividing issues involves the crucial source coding choice: Tabs or Spaces? The issue is both less and more important these days. Less because editors are very capable; more because Python is popular.

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PF.exe

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Stories

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Programmers, like carpenters, are builders — we make things. The work can be for pay, but carpenters, for example, can build their own bookshelves and doghouses. Programmers also make software for themselves, sometimes to amuse, sometimes to provide a useful function.

A few of the apps I created for myself over the years turned out to be major workhorses for me — tools I used frequently. One of the earliest was PF.EXE, my Process File utility.

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Blast From the Past #1

19 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Fun

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In the process of cleaning out boxes of old paperwork, I found this company memo, circa early 1980s, that describes a “simpler” way to send email. At the time, email systems were mainframe-based text systems you logged onto and typed at — actually not terribly unlike the web-based email systems today.

The memo reminds me of how it was back then and of how far we’ve come since. Here it is, reproduced as is:

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Data, Text and Strings (oh, my!)

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Opinion

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The Strings and Text are not the same post on Musing Mortoray discusses the difference between “text” and “strings” and got me thinking. Rather than weigh down his (or her) comment section with a very long comment, I thought I’d go on a bit about it here.

I agree totally with the basic premise: that “text” and “strings” are different beasts. I also agree that text-handling depends on the text. There might be some difference in how we define text and string, and thinking about how I define them turned up a lot of thoughts on the matter. This isn’t intended as an opposition post (except on one point with regard to HTML). What follows is just one programmer’s opinion.

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