Python! My old nemesis, we meet again. Actually, we meet all the time, but despite that there are always things which I cannot quite remember how to do and need to look them up. To help with the searching, here there are collected in one post:

• Converting a date into a timestamp
• Re-rising Python exception preserving back-trace
• Flattening a list in Python

Let’s Encrypt has left beta and to celebrate, this blog gained TLS support. \o/ If all goes well it’ll become the default including an HSTS header so everyone can benefit from improved privacy†.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Unicode. Most are there because people assume what they know about ASCII or ISO-8859-* is true about Unicode. They are usually harmless but they tend to creep into minds of people who work with text which leads to badly designed software and technical decisions made based on false information.

Without further ado, here’s a few facts about Unicode that might surprise you.

There are multiple ways to customise Bash prompt. There’s no need to look for long to find plethora of examples with fancy, colourful PS1s. What have been a bit problematic is having text on the right of the input line. In this article I’ll try to address that shortcoming.

Getting text on the right

The typical approach is using PROMPT_COMMAND to output desired content. The variable specifies a shell code Bash executes prior to rendering the primary prompt (i.e. PS1).

The idea is to align text to the right and then using carrier return move the cursor back to the beginning of the line where Bash will start rendering its prompt. Let’s look at an example of showing time in various locations:

__command_rprompt() {
	local times= n=$COLUMNS tz
	for tz in ZRH:Europe/Zurich PIT:US/Eastern \
	          MTV:US/Pacific TOK:Asia/Tokyo; do
		[ $n -gt 40 ] || break
		times="$times ${tz%%:*}\e[30;1m:\e[0;36;1m"
		times="$times$(TZ=${tz#*:} date +%H:%M)\e[0m"
		n=$(( $n - 10 ))
	done
	[ -z "$times" ] || printf "%${n}s$times\\r" ''
}
PROMPT_COMMAND=__command_rprompt

Clearing the line on execution

It has one annoying issue. The right text reminds on screen even after executing a command. Typically this is a matter of aesthetic but it also makes copying and pasting session history more convoluted.

A manual solution is to use redraw-current-line readline function (e.g. often bound to C-l). It clears the line and prints the prompt and whatever input has been entered thus far. PROMPT_COMMAND is not executed so the right text does not reappear.

Lack of automation can be addressed with a tiny bit of readline magic and a ~/.inputrc file which deserves much more fame than what it usually gets.

Tricky part is bindind C-m and C-j to two readline functions, redraw-current-line followed by accept-line, which is normally not possible. This limitation can be overcome by binding the key sequences to a different sequence which will be interpreted recursively.

To test that idea it’s enough to execute:

bind '\C-l:redraw-current-line'
bind '\M-\C-j:accept-line'
bind '\C-j:"\C-l\M-\C-j"' '\C-m:"\C-j"'

Making this permanent is as easy as adding the following lines to ~/.inputrc:

$if Bash
    "\C-l": redraw-current-line
    "\e\C-j": accept-line
    "\C-j": "\C-l\e\C-j"
    "\C-m": "\C-l\e\C-j"
$endif

With that, the right prompt will disappear as soon as the shell command is executed. (Note the use of \M- in bind command vs. \e in ~/.inputrc file).

Don’t you hate when you need to do something you had done before, but cannot remember how exactly? I’ve been in that situation several times and sometimes looking up for a correct method turned out considerably harder than it should. To alleviate the need for future Googling, here’s a bag of notes I can reference easily:

• Getting past Chrome certificate error
• ‘Compressing’ git repository
• Changing commits author
• How to start a letter in English
• Summing numbers in a column in Emacs

Looking for Python stuff? Those are now in separate post:

• Converting date to timestamp
• Re-rising Python exception preserving back-trace
• Flattening a list in Python

Outside of functional programming context, map-reduce refers to a technique for processing data. Thanks to properties of map and reduce operations, computations which can be expressed using them can be highly parallelised, which allows for faster processing of high volumes of data.

If you’ve ever wondered how tools such as Apache Hadoop work, you’re at the right page. In this article I’ll explain what map and reduce are and later also introduce a shuffle phase.

Same as my previous article written in Polish, this text will describe some steps I take after installing Slackware Linux. I try to strike a balance between performance, security and usability, but not everything written here may work for everyone. You have been warned.