Sir FZ's Personal Blog

Fareeq el Atrash featured on TRACKS (Arte TV)

2011-12-23T17:28:00.000+02:00

Our interview on Tracks (Arte TV) finally aired this month :) Watch the full report (French):

And don't forget to checkout the bonus videos uploaded here!

TCL Scripts Links Updated

2011-11-08T15:48:00.002+02:00

I have updated the links to my public scripts in the original Public TCL Scripts by Opposing post. The scripts are now hosted on my dropbox account and the older 4shared links are still available as mirrors.

You can also find the scripts at www.egghelp.org (under alias: Opposing)

Transfer SMS Messages from Nokia (Symbian) to Android

2011-10-17T23:51:00.000+03:00

Two months ago, I switched from my Nokia N8 to my new Samsung Galaxy S II handset. Of course, I had to move all my data from the old phone to the new one. Didn't know, however, that switching between Symbian and Android isn't very well facilitated. It was pretty easy to move contacts, pictures and media from Symbian to Android but the complicated part was moving sms messages. I found some helpful methods online such as this (I suggest you try it first before reading further and trying my method) but unfortunately it didn't work for me because my Ovi Suite version was new and not supported by the Nokia2AndroidSMS application (it failed to extract my messages). So, I had to figure out a different way to do this, which required some coding. I decided to share my method with the world as I'm sure lots of other users faced similar problems. This should work no matter what version of Ovi Suite you got:

Connect your Nokia handset and start Nokia Ovi Suite on your PC
Create a backup .nbu file (it doesn't matter what you select for backup, as long as it includes messages)
Download NBU Explorer (open-source program which allows you to explorer .nbu backup files and export them)
Run NbuExplorer.exe > File > Open > Browse to your .nbu file and open it
Go to the Messages tab and click on "Export Messages" button located above the table on the right pane
in the "Save as type" field, select (*.xml) and save the file
I wrote a little tool which converts the .xml file to the format accepted by the SMS Backup & Restore Android application. Download XML2Android.exe
Save the tool in the same folder where you saved the .xml extracted file
Open the command line console (Win7: Start > type "cmd" and press enter)
CD to the directory where you saved the files (e.g. CD C:\my_messages\)
Execute: XML2Android <yourfile.xml> (e.g. XML2Andoid my_sms.xml)
This will generate a file called AndroidSMS.xml, copy this file to your Android phone
On your Android, download the SMS Backup & Restore app from the Android Market
Now, simply run the app on your phone and Restore your old messages from the generated XML file. You're done!

Note: A user reported that he faced some problems with weird characters in the exported XML file from NBU Explorer. The XML2Android app will report the location of the invalid character(s) so make sure you modify the file using a text editor (I recommend Notepad++) to remove the bad lines and re-run the app against it (to avoid missing messages). Thanks to "Dr. Manjit M" who reported this problem below in the comments.

Note 2: The XML2Android.exe tool requires .Net Framework 3.5 to run, if you have Windows 7 it shouldn't be a problem (you might need to install the required framework on other Windows versions). Also, it is a basic tool which I wrote roughly without capturing any exceptions or false usage... Make sure you use it correctly before reporting any bugs

Edit2: Added exception handling to skip erroneous messages
Edit: There was a bug with the XML2Android.exe originally uploaded app. It has now been fixed

Lawein / Ba'ed Min Hon Music Video

2011-05-18T11:08:00.005+03:00

Here it is, our first official music video released last month! Don't mind the thick eyeliners, it's not on purpose :P

Two songs in one video clip from Fareeq El Atrash's debut album "Fareeq El Atrash".

As a decade elapses from the 21st century and we look back to a very well documented 20th century, we take a moment to reflect on the events that have marked Lebanon, the Middle East, and the World. Fareeq El Atrash take us on a journey to remember a century of eccentric art and fashion, wars and dictators, actors and musicians...

Times have changed; the players have changed (most of them at least); however the events and the themes are recurrent.

Fareeq el Atrash AGT Semi-finals

2011-04-05T10:41:00.014+03:00

So, it was definitely fun! Our performance looked and sounded real good in my humble opinion :) Check it out:

Arabs Got Talent - Semi-finals - فريق الأطرش Fareeq el Atrash.

NOTE: The below video of our performance has been brought down (again) from Youtube, are we that big? Cool! We got our share of tens of 1000s views though, thank you all for the support! We promise to bring you more and cooler videos ;)

Edit: Replaced mbc's youtube video with another one uploaded by someone else due to the first being removed for no apparent reason.
Edit2: Added new uploaded video on Vimeo.

Fareeq el Atrash on Arabs' Got Talent (First Round)

2011-02-14T20:25:00.010+02:00

Last week, the 5th episode of Arabs' Got Talent aired on MBC4. Here's a nice edit of Fareeq el Atrash's performance:

Arabs Got Talent - Ep 5 - فريق الأطرش Fareeq el Atrash

And if you wish to view a video with the judges' reaction (without the initial report), check this video:

Updated: Post updated with new link to vimeo video (better performance than metacafe).

Agmal Ehsas Beatbox

2011-01-12T19:48:00.003+02:00

During a nice live interview on OTV in June 2010, promoting for Fareeq el Atrash's debut album release, I performed the "Agmal Ehsas" beatbox tune for the masses live on air. That was fun!

AllProtection v4.7 STABLE Released!!

2010-12-21T23:22:00.004+02:00

Finally, here it comes! This should have been done two years ago (maybe even more) but it's all good now. I decided to release the final version of the successful AllProtection; version 4.7 is supposed to be bug-free and stable (we'll see).

This project had become a huge passion for me when I first started working on it and I'm pretty proud of what it turned out to be. Thanks to everyone who helped shaping this script, from suggestions to bug reports and good words/complements!

Download version 4.7 from http://www.4shared.com/file/ub1lfsTA/allprotection47.html

I hope this version would be as close to everyone's needs as possible. I will continue to respond to questions/bug reports in the script's thread at: http://forum.egghelp.org/viewtopic.php?t=9721.

You can find all my publicly-released scripts here.

BlackList v1.4 Released

2010-12-21T23:13:00.007+02:00

After a bug in v1.3 has been reported in an egghelp thread here, I decided to release an upgraded version of the script having this serious (unnoticed) bug fixed.

Basically, when using the bansame option with hostmasks similar to [ab\c]!*@*, the script would place a ban on mask \[ab\\c\]!*@* instead of [ab\c]!*@* (although it perfectly recognized the correct mask on join). This has now been fixed in v1.4.

Get the new version from: http://www.4shared.com/file/8ERNn9Ym/blacklist14.html

You can find all my publicly-released scripts here.

TCL Scripts Links Updated!

2010-11-08T22:55:00.003+02:00

Excuse my lack of attention to my TCL scripts, apparently several people tried to download the files but the links were down. I have now updated all the links and they should all be properly working. I also took the privilege of uploading a newer version of the Ping script (version 1.4) which solves the problem of some clients not replying to the script's ping requests.

Links updated for post: Eggdrop Tcl Scripts by Opposing (a.k.a Sir_Fz). Please do not hesitate to contact me in case you face any problems with any of the scripts.

Note: AllProtection official support thread is still at http://forum.egghelp.org/viewtopic.php?t=9721 (I do not reply to any private queries about it)

FZ (Beatbox) Vs. Ceasar K (Scratch)

2010-10-07T00:42:00.006+03:00

During this Monday night's hiphop open mic event with DJ Sotusura, I was lucky to have this track recorded - beatboxing live with DJ Sotusura and then DJ Ceasar K scratching and burning the decks! Check it out and expect more to come ;)
FZ & Ceasar k at Flipside (05-10-10) by flipsidebeirut

Fareeq el Atrash on Mazaj

2010-09-02T19:21:00.004+03:00

So it was a cool interview right before a sound check for an event that day, and it was the next day after our album release concert. It's been nicely edited so mad props to the Mazaj crew ;) Enjoy the video!

Sir FZ Beatboxing with DJ Rob Swift on The Turntables

2010-08-04T10:58:00.004+03:00

There it is :) At last I got, although short, footage of the legendary moment in Beirut with DJ Rob Swift! They just passed me the mic and from their we improvised - "That was fun" as Rob Swift put it, indeed!

Fareeq el Atrash Album In Stores

2010-07-26T21:55:00.003+03:00

Self-titled album Fareeq el Atrash is available in stores now all around Lebanon. It will gradually become available across the Arab world as soon as it passes censorship checks.

To get the album directly from Forward Music online, please visit http://www.forwardmusic.net/ShopOnline/SubPageDetCd.php?itemId=104&catId=1

Become a fan on facebook and join our group to receive the latest updates.

Support the local music scene!

Fareeq el Atrash Debut Album Release!

2010-06-13T18:52:00.008+03:00

Forward Music is pleased to announce the release of Fareeq El Atrash’s Debut album in a Live concert followed by a CD signing.

Fareeq El Atrash LIVE in concert
As part of the “Fête De La Musique”
@ the Roman Baths. Downtown, Beirut
@ 11:30 pm. Free Entrance. Come all, come many!

Fareeq el Atrash is a live hip hop band from Beirut, Lebanon. The band is spearheaded by the region's finest and most lyrical emcees, Edd and Cappuchyno, along with Lebanon’s foremost beatboxer and live vocal effects man, FZ. Fareeq el Atrash has been on the local music scene since 2006 backed by multi-instrumentalist Ghassan "Goo" Khayyat, and bass player John Imad Nasr.

Fareeq El Atrash will capture your emotions with their live hip hop sound, laced with neo-soul, Funk, and rock. They will also capture your mind with the lyrical content of the songs that cover personal storytelling through relationships and romance, to current social issues and political diatribes. Fareeq el Atrash is a band that embodies a generation’s state of mind. They are grounded in Beirut but their message and style is universal: Lyrical and musical Protest!

This debut album is a product of some of the toughest times in Lebanon in recent memory but at the same time It will make you nod your head and stomp your feet on the dance floor because of the summery and joyous feel it projects.

Veteran drummer, Fouad Afra and a full horn section join Fareeq El Atrash on this debut album setting a new standard for hip hop coming out of the Middle East.

Forward Music: http://www.forwardmusic.net
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120462337996140
Fareeq el Atrash:
* Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Fareeq.el.Atrash
* Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/futrush
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Fareeq el Atrash - Corruption

2010-02-11T00:15:00.006+02:00

Fareeq el Atrash (Lebanon) is ambassador for Fair Play - Anti-Corruption Youth Voices, the global music competition organized in partnership between Jeunesses Musicales International and the World Bank Institute. Competition opens 1 February. More info www.jmi.net

Beatbox & Stage Performance Workshops

2009-09-09T18:59:00.002+03:00

Fareeq el Atrash will be giving two (out of five) separate workshops (part of the European-Lebanese Rap-Poetry Festival) covering the following:

- Beatboxing (By Fz)
- Stage performance (By Edd & Chyno)

The workshops will cover different aspects of the mentioned subjects from introduction, technique, skill, help-material and more. Local artists and artists from Germany will be joining us as well.

For those interested, the workshops will be held on October 7, 8 and 9. Our work will be presented in a concert on the 10th of October. Please contact me if you wish to register for one of the mentioned workshops (mailto: sirr [dot] fz [at] gmail [dot] com); the number of participants is limited.

Best regards,

Fareeq el Atrash.

Superstar 2008 Promotion

2009-03-04T14:16:00.004+02:00

Beatboxer/Artist: Fayez Zouheiry
Director/Editor: Merass Sadek
D.O.P.: Damoun Ghaoui
A.D.: Najeeb Zeitouni

AllProtection v4.6b9 Released

2008-11-10T00:21:00.004+02:00

New version of AllProtection beta version has been released (v4.6b9). A few important bugs have been fixed since v4.6b8. This could possibly become a stable release soon after testing completion. Get it from here.

Tcl The Misunderstood

2008-10-29T21:29:00.007+02:00

Originally posted here at antirez.com.

Salvatore antirez Sanfilippo, 6 March 2006

Why Tcl is not a toy language, but a very powerful one

In an article recently linked from reddit entitled
Tour de Babel you can read (among lots of other nonsense): Heck, people still use Tcl as an embedded interpreter, even though Python is far superior to Tcl in every conceivable way -- except, that is, for the frost thing.

Ok, the whole article is well.. not very valid, but unfortunately while many misconceptions are promptly recognized by the informed reader, this one against Tcl is generally believed at face value. I hope this article
will convince people that Tcl is not that bad.

Prologue

In my programming life I have used a lot of languages to write different kind of applications: many free/paywork programs in C, a web CMS in Scheme, a number of networking/web applications in Tcl, a shop
management system in Python, and so on. I used to play with a number of other programming languages like Smalltalk, Self, FORTH, Ruby, Joy,... And yet, I have no doubt, that there is no language that is as misunderstood in the programming community as Tcl is.

Tcl is not without faults, but most of its limitations are not hard coded in the language design, they are just the result of the fact that Tcl lost its "father" (John Ousterhout) a number of years ago, and together with him any kind of single-minded strong leadership that was able to take strong decisions. With the right changes it is possible to overcome most of the limitations of Tcl, and at the same time preserve the power of the language. If you don't trust Tcl is remarkably powerful please take the time to read this article first. Maybe you still won't like it afterwards, but hopefully you will respect it, and you will certainly have strong arguments against the Tcl is a toy language misconception that's even more petty than Lisp has too many parenthesis.

Before we begin, I'll spend some time explaining how Tcl works. Like the best languages in the world, Tcl has a few concepts that, combined together, allow for programming freedom and expressiveness.

After this short introduction to Tcl, you'll see how in Tcl things very similar to Lisp macros just happen using normal procedures (in a much more powerful way than Ruby blocks), how it's possible to redefine almost every part of the language itself, and how it is possible to mostly ignore types when programming. The Tcl community developed a number of OOP systems, radical language modifications, macrosystems, and many other interesting things, just writing Tcl programs. If you like programmable programming languages I bet you'll at least look on it with interest.

Tcl in five minutes

Concept 1: Programs are composed of commands

The first idea of the Tcl language is: commands. Programs are commands, one after the other. For
example to set the variable 'a' to 5 and print its value you write two commands:


set a 5
puts $a

Commands are space separated words. A command ends with a newline or with a ; character. Everything is a command in Tcl - as you can see there is no assignment operator. To set a variable you need a command,
the set command, that sets the variable specified as the first argument to the value specified as the second argument.

Almost every Tcl command returns a value, For example the set command returns the value assigned to the variable. If the set command is called with just one argument (the variable name), the current value of the variable is returned.

Concept 2: Command substitution

The second idea is command substitution. In a command some arguments may appear between [ and ] braces. If so the argument is substituted with the return value of the code included inside the braces. For example:


set a 5
puts [set a]

The first argument of the second command, [set a], will be substituted with the return value of "set a" (that's 5). After the substitution step the command will be converted from:


puts [set a]


puts 5

And, at that point, it will be executed.

Concept 3: Variable substitution

Always using the set command for variable substitution would be too verbose, so even if not strictly needed, variable substitution was introduced at some time during the early development of Tcl. If a variable name is preceded by the $ character it is substituted with its value. So instead of


puts [set a]

it's possible to write


puts $a

Concept 4: Grouping

If commands are space separated words, how to deal with the need for arguments that may contain spaces? For example:


puts Hello World

is an incorrect program as Hello and World are two different arguments. This problem is solved by grouping. Text inside "" is considered a single argument, so the right program is:


puts "Hello World"

Commands and variables substitution work inside this kind of grouping, For example I can write:


set a 5
set b foobar
puts "Hello $a World [string length $b]"

And the result will be "Hello 5 World 6". Also, escapes like \t, \n will do what you think. There is, however, another kind of grouping where every kind of special character is just considered verbatim without any kind of substitution step. Everything between { and } is seen by Tcl as a unique argument where no substitutions are performed. So:


set a 5
puts {Hello $a World}

Will print Hello $a World.

Concept 1 again: Everything is a command

Concept 1 was: programs are composed of commands. Actually it is much more true than you may think. For example in the program:


set a 5
if $a {
    puts Hello!
}

if is a command, with two arguments. The first is the value of the variable a substituted, the second is the string { ... puts Hello! ... }. The if command uses a special version of Eval that we'll see in a moment to run the script passed as the second argument, and returns the result. Of course, you can write
your version of if or any other control structure if you want. You may even redefine if itself and add some feature to it!

Concept 5: Everything is a string - no types

The following program works and does what you think:


set a pu
set b ts
$a$b "Hello World"

Yes, in Tcl everything happens at runtime and is dynamic: it's the ultimate late binding programming language, and there are no types. The command name is not a special type but just a string. Numbers are also just strings, so is Tcl code, a string (remember we passed a string to the if command as second argument?). In Tcl what a string represents is up to the command that's manipulating it. the string "5" will be seen as a string of characters by the "string length 5" command, and as a boolean value by "if $a ..." command. Of course commands check that values have a suitable form, If I try to add "foo" to "bar" Tcl will produce an exception because it can't parse "foo" nor "bar" as numbers. This kind of checks in Tcl are very strict, so you'll not get the PHP-alike effect of silent absurd type conversions. The type conversion only happens if the string makes sense interpreted as the thing the command needs as arguments.

So Tcl is so dynamic, but guess what? It is more or less as fast as current Ruby implementations. There is a trick in the implementation of Tcl: objects (not in the OOP sense, but C structs representing Tcl values) cache the native value of the last use of a given string. If a Tcl value is always used as a number the C struct representing it will contain an integer inside, and as long as the next commands continue to use it as an integer, the string representation of the object is not touched at all. It's a bit more complex than this, but the result is that the programmer doesn't need to think about types, and programs still work as fast as other dynamic programming languages where types are more explicit.

Concept 6: Tcl lists

One of the more interesting types (or better.. string formats) Tcl uses is lists. Lists are mostly the central structure of a Tcl program: a Tcl list is always a valid Tcl command! (and both are just strings, in the end). In the simplest form lists are like commands: space separated words. For example the string "a b foo bar" is a list with four elements. There are commands to take a range of elements from a list, to add elements, and so on. Of course, lists may have elements containing spaces, so in order to create well formatted lists the list command is used. Example:


set l [list a b foo "hello world"]
puts [llength $l]

llength returns the length of the list, so the above program will print 4 as output. lindex will instead return the element at the specified position, so "lindex $l 2" will return "foo", and so on. Like in Lisp, in Tcl most programmers use the list type to model as many concepts as possible in programs.

Concept 7: Math in Tcl

I bet most Lisp hackers already noted how Tcl is a prefix-notation language, so you may think like in Lisp, math in Tcl is performed using math operators as commands, like: puts [+ 1 2]. Instead, things work in a different way: in order to make Tcl more friendly there is a command taking infix math expressions as argument and evaluating them. This command is called expr, and math in Tcl works like this:


set a 10
set b 20
puts [expr $a+$b]

Commands like if and while use expr internally in order to evaluate expressions, for instance:


while {$a < $b} {
    puts Hello
}

where the while command takes two arguments - the first string being evaluated as an expression to check if it's true at every iteration, and the second evaluated itself each time. I think it's a design error that math commands are not builtins, I see expr like a cool tool to have where there is complex math to do, but to just add two numbers [+ $a $b] is more convenient. It's worth noting that this has been formally proposed as a change to the language.

Concept 8: Procedures

Naturally, nothing stops a Tcl programmer from writing a procedure (that's a user defined command) in order to use math operators as commands. Like this:


proc + {a b} {
    expr {$a+$b}
}

The proc command is used to create a procedure: its first argument is the procedure name, the second is the list of arguments the procedure takes as input, and finally the last argument is the body of the procedure. Note that the second argument, the arguments list, is a Tcl list. As you can see the return value of the last command in a procedure is used as return value of the procedure (unless the return command is used explicitly). But wait... Everything is a command in Tcl right? So we can create the procedures for +, -, *, ... in a simpler way instead of writing four different procedures:


set operators [list + - * /]
foreach o $operators {
    proc $o {a b} [list expr "\$a $o \$b"]
}

After this we can use [+ 1 2], [/ 10 2] and so on. Of course it's smarter to create these procedures as varargs like Scheme's procedures. In Tcl procedures can have the same names as built in commands, so you can redefine Tcl itself. For example, in order to write a macro system for Tcl I redefined proc. Redefining proc is also useful for writing profilers (Tcl profilers are developed in Tcl itself usually). After a built in command is redefined you can still call it if you renamed it to some other name prior to overwriting it with proc.

Concept 9: Eval and Uplevel

If you are reading this article you already know what Eval is. The command eval {puts hello} will of course evaluate the code passed as argument, as happens in many other programming languages. In Tcl there is another beast, a command called uplevel that can evaluate code in the context of the calling procedure, or for what it's worth, in the context of the caller of the caller (or directly at the top level). What this means is that what in Lisp are macros, in Tcl are just simple procedures. Example: in Tcl there is no "built-in" for a command repeat to be used like this:


repeat 5 {
    puts "Hello five times"
}

But to write it is trivial.


proc repeat {n body} {
    set res ""
    while {$n} {
        incr n -1
        set res [uplevel $body]
    }
    return $res
}

Note that we take care to save the result of the last evaluation, so our repeat will (like most Tcl commands) return the last evaluated result. An example of usage:


set a 10
repeat 5 {incr a} ;# Repeat will return 15

As you can guess, the incr command is used to increment an integer var by one (if you omit its second argument). "incr a" is executed in the context of the calling procedure, (i.e. the previous stack frame). Congratulations, you know more than 90% of Tcl concepts!

Why is Tcl powerful?

I am not going to show you every single Tcl feature, but I want to give an idea of advanced programming tasks that are solved in a very nice way with Tcl. I want to stress that I think Tcl has a number of faults, but most of them are not in the main ideas of the language itself. I think there is room for a Tcl-derived language that can compete with Ruby, Lisp and Python today in interesting domains like web programming, network programming, GUI development, DSL and as scripting language.

Simple syntax that scales

Tcl syntax is so simple that you can write a parser for Tcl in few lines of code in Tcl itself. I wrote a macro system for Tcl in Tcl as I already mentioned, which is able to do source level transformations complex enough to allow tail call optimization. At the same time, Tcl syntax is able to scale to appear more algol-like, it depends on your programming style.

No types, but strict format checks

There are no types, and you don't need to perform conversions, however, you aren't likely to introduce bugs because the checks on the format of the strings are very strict. Even better, you don't need serialization. Have a big complex Tcl list and want to send it via a TCP socket? Just write: puts $socket $mylist. On the other side of the socket read it as set mylist [read $socket]. and you are done.

Powerful, event driven I/O model

Tcl has built-in event-driven programming, integrated with the I/O library. To write complex networking programs with just what is provided in the core language is so simple it's funny. An example: the following program is a concurrent (internally select(2) based) TCP server that outputs the current time to every client.


socket -server handler 9999
proc handler {fd clientaddr clientport} {
    set t [clock format [clock seconds]]
    puts $fd "Hello $clientaddr:$clientport, current date is $t"
    close $fd
}
vwait forever

Non-blocking I/O and events are handled so well that you can even write to a socket where there is no longer output buffer and Tcl will automatically buffer it in userland and send it in background to the socket when there is again space on the socket's output buffer.
Python users know a good idea when they see it - Python's "Twisted" framework makes use of the same select-driven IO concepts that Tcl has had natively for years.

Multiple paradigms

In Tcl you can write object oriented code, functional style code, and imperative code in a mix, like it happens in Common Lisp more or less. A number of OOP systems and Functional Programming primitives where implemented in the past. There are everything from prototype-based OOP systems to SmallTalk-like ones, and many are implemented in Tcl itself (or were initially, as a proof-of-concept). Furthermore, because code in Tcl is first class, it is very simple to write functional language primitives that play well with the logic of the language. An example is lmap:


lmap i {1 2 3 4 5} {
    expr $i*$i
}

which will return a list of squares, 1 4 9 12 25. You can write a map-like function based on a version of lamba (also developed in Tcl itself), but Tcl has already what you need to allow for a more natural functional programming than the Lisp way (which works well for Lisp but maybe not for everything else). Note what happens when you try to add functional programming to a language that's too rigid: Python and the endless debate of its functional primitives.

Central data structure: the list

If you are a Lisp programmer you know how beautiful is to have a flexible data structure like the list everywhere in your programs, especially when the literal is as simple as "foo bar 3 4 5 6" in most cases.

Programmable programming language via uplevel

Via eval, uplevel, upvar and the very powerful introspection capabilities of Tcl you can redefine the language and invent new ways of solving problems. For example, the following interesting command if called as first command in a function will automagically make it a memoizing version of the function:


proc memoize {} {
    set cmd [info level -1]
    if {[info level] > 2 && [lindex [info level -2] 0] eq "memoize"} return
    if {![info exists ::Memo($cmd)]} {set ::Memo($cmd) [eval $cmd]}
    return -code return $::Memo($cmd)
}

Then, when you write a procedure just write something like:


proc myMemoizingProcedure { ... } {
    memoize
    ... the rest of the code ...
}

i18n just happens

Tcl is probably the language with the best internationalization support. Every string is internally encoded in utf-8, all the string operations are Unicode-safe, including the regular expression engine. Basically, in Tcl programs, encodings are not a problem - they just work.

Radical language modifications = DSL

If you define a procedure called unknown it is called with a Tcl list representing arguments of every command Tcl tried to execute, but failed because the command name was not defined. You can do what you like with it, and return a value, or raise an error. If you just return a value, the command will appear to work even if unknown to Tcl, and the return value returned by unknown will be used as return value of the not defined command. Add this to uplevel and upvar, and the language itself that's almost syntax free, and what you get is an impressive environment for Domain Specific Languages development. Tcl has almost no syntax, like Lisp and FORTH, but there are different ways to have no syntax. Tcl looks like a configuration file by default:


disable ssl
validUsers jim barbara carmelo
hostname foobar {
    allow from 2:00 to 8:00
}

The above is a valid Tcl program, once you define the commands used, disable, validUsers and hostname.

Much more

Unfortunately there isn't room to show a lot of interesting features: most Tcl commands just do one single thing well with easy to remember names. Strings operations, introspection and other features are implemented as single commands with subcommands, for example string length, string range and so on. Every part of the language that gets indexes as argument support an end-num notation, so for example to take all the elements of a list but not the first nor the last you just write:


lrange $mylist 1 end-1

And in general there is a lot of good design and optimization for the common case inside. Moreover the Tcl source code is one of the best written C programs you'll find, and the quality of the interpreter is amazing: commercial grade in the best sense of the word. Another interesting thing about the implementation is that it works exactly the same in different environments, from Windows to Unix, to Mac OS X. No quality difference among different operating systems (yes, including Tk, the main GUI library of Tcl).

Conclusion

I don't claim everybody should like Tcl. What I claim is that Tcl is a powerful language and not a Toy, and it's possible to create a new Tcl-alike language without most of the limitations of Tcl but with all of its power. I tried this myself, and the Jim interpreter is the result: the code is there and working and can run most Tcl programs, but then I had no longer time to work for free to language development, so the project is now more or less abandoned. Another attempt to develop a Tcl-alike language, Hecl, is currently in progress, as a scripting language for Java applications, where the author (David Welton) exploits the fact that the Tcl core implementation is small, and the command based design simple to use as a glue between the two languages (This is not typical with modern dynamic languages, but both the ideas apply to Scheme too). I'll be very glad if, after reading this article, you no longer think of Tcl as a Toy. Thank you. Salvatore.

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p.s. want to learn more about Tcl? Visit the Tclers Wiki.

Electrical Engineers

2008-08-24T20:59:00.003+03:00

Are you interested in the latest updates in the field of electrical engineering? We have found a great resource with the latest updates and information about electrical engineering news and updates. Visit www.ee-lu.com and start reading!

Eggdrop 1.6.19 Released

2008-04-20T13:28:00.001+03:00

posted by guppy on 18 April 2008 @ 11:59 pm CDT

Hi folks,

I'm pleased to announce the release of Eggdrop 1.6.19 -- which is the first release in a _long_ time and hopefully I didn't mess it up :)

You can grab it from ftp://ftp.eggheads.org/pub/eggdrop/GNU/1.6/

Please see the UPDATES1.6 file in the doc directory for information on things that have changed since Eggdrop 1.6.18.

MD5 Sums:

c64938e1d2245f5d2ef9bd1253c65dc9  eggdrop1.6.18-1.6.19.patch.desc
35927e50da1e0a73ab9cdd71f32534e0  eggdrop1.6.18-1.6.19.patch.gz
99860ea1a4d486d74019d3bbc26f8d95  eggdrop1.6.18-1.6.19.patch.gz.asc
b706bbe4fdd05964e0ea0cd920f28539  eggdrop1.6.19.tar.bz2
a01a09f972d8aace7733d7796610f062  eggdrop1.6.19.tar.bz2.asc
4d89a901e95f0f9937f4ffac783d55d8  eggdrop1.6.19.tar.gz
934ba78e6b4e50cbc00ed834e4e20849  eggdrop1.6.19.tar.gz.asc

PGP Key:

http://www.techmonkeys.org/gpg/jeff_personal.pub

Eggdrop Tcl Scripts by Opposing (a.k.a Sir_Fz)

2008-04-15T19:02:00.015+03:00

Useful scripts that I've written for public use:

All Protection v4.7 (mirror)
An all around protection script which protects your channels from all types of floods (public/private/notice/CAPS/codes/clones/joins/parts/revolving door/mass floods/takeovers/drones/advertisements/bad words/nicks and more...) and has a built-in anti-spam bot which can cycle your channels and signal your Eggdrop to kick offenders. Includes custom features like kick info and counter in kick-messages and banning through services. Also can akill/k-line offenders if the bot is an IRCOp; script can be tweaked based on your desire.
Fz Commands v3.1 (mirror)
A script which allows public and private control of your bot. It has admin and owner access levels, highly secure and can assign different access levels for users on every channel. Contains all essential commands such as op, voice, kick, ban, add, remove, chattr...etc (includes manipulating eggdrop's internal ban list). Recommended for controlling your channel.
Black List v1.4 (mirror)
A script which allows you to add hostmasks to a black list via DCC or public commands. Very fast in banning blacklisted users and protects the bot from flooding out if many blakclisted users join simultaneously. Nifty options included in the script.
Ping v1.4 (mirror)
A nice little script that replies to !ping requests (can be enabled/disabled on each channel).

Scripts also available at www.egghelp.org
All scripts are published under the General Public License (GPL).