Development on Shivanand Velmurugan — Product leader. Systems thinker.

Badly punctuated parameter list in #define

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes working with an old c compiler brings up painful, yet fun-filled days of making it speak the same language as you, and sometimes you just go “*$&%*$#&% you piece of sh** compiler”

I had one such moment today, and after I had returned to Zen (some soul-searching and some google searching), I realized it quite simple.

$ gmake  
...  
...  
some_file.h:42: badly punctuated parameter list in \`#define'  
some_file.h:64: badly punctuated parameter list in \`#define'  
Failed to compile  
$

This was caused by the following:

Unsigned Arithmetic

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Since my last post, I’ve had a couple of replies, a few more tweets, and few minutes of talking about unsigned types in Java, and why it doesn’t support them.

I still retail the view that unsigned types are unnecessary for the majority of Java developers. The only kind that should care, are those who deal with network information (like representing an ipaddress or macaddress). Everyone, put down your forks, and do not touch the unsigned.

cvs - Getting list of files changed in the current tree

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The simple way to retreive the list of changed files would be to update the tree, which would then list the files updated.

#cvs update . > filelist.dat

The problem with this, is that if there have been changes to other files after your last update, you will have to manually glean the files that you have changed. I tend face this, particularly during the last couple of weeks before a release, since you don’t want to risk updating your tree everyday, but still have to make 2/3 checkins. I did some googling today, and found how to find the list of files changed without updating your tree.

EX-SideRSS

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After several months of keeping away from updating or changing my website, I broke the fast today. I found a wonderful plugin, sideRSS, which allows display of RSS feeds within a blog’s sidebar. As usual, I needed a specific functionality that was not supported the way I wanted it. I hacked it a little bit, renamed the plugin, and posted a custom version for download on my website.

If you need to share Google Shared Items, on your blog, but hate to include javascript (like I do), then use this. You can download it here (right-click and use “Save Target As…”) and find install information here.

Common Access Portal

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

With advent of web 2.0, and some habits cultivated over the last decade, I have a certain list of tasks that I do everyday. I current visit a bunch of websites more than once a day, and an integrated interface would do me so much good.

mail, a whole set of accounts, gmail, yahoo, etc
feed readers
blog editor
orkut
del.icio
google notebook

What is lacking, is the ability to have a single sign-on/account mgmt capability, a common dashboard, ability to cross-launch/cross-post content.