Diving into Python: printing to console

I just started diving into Python.  Having enjoyed the ease of ColdFusion for so long, working with Python is like trying to resist a gag reflex.  Mostly diving into it because of the popularity of the language.  As usual, you start with the "Hello World" and work up from there learning the nuances.  somethings just don't make a whole lot of sense on why a language designer would do something so differently..

Take the print() statement for example.   to design the print statement to always perform line feed without thinking design wise, that you might want to combine multiple elements on the same line.  Having a "," at the end to do so seems awkward.   specially at a 2.x stage.  3.x is an improvement, but still "meh"

The below bit shows how you would do it depending on which version.

this would produce "hello hello hello hello hello" (with the appropriate line comments removed/added  for the version of Python you are using

for _ in range(5):
    #below is 2.x
    print("hello"),
    #below is 3.x
    #print("hello", end =" ")

 Moving to 3.x, backward compatibility was not maintained  so you have to refactor your code.  Admittedly I'm new to Python, and haven't looked at earlier 3.x releases, so this backward compatibility statement might be a bit skewed.  This very first bit of an example of the differences of a 2.x vs 3.x version would send shivers down my spine on any thought of moving an existing code base to a new version.

How to Make an Ugly Excel Document: Otherwise known as Unit Testing POIUtility 4.0 (Apache POI 4.0.1) compatible

I've been working on a revamp of Ben Nadel's excellent but aging POIUtility for the generation of Excel files.   I've been needing XLSX support so I updated the code to use Apache POI 4.0.1 and embedded Mark Mandel's JavaLoader and the needed packages for it to work standalone without java lib dependencies on the server.

Here's a summary of what I've done so far;

• Uses Apache POI 4.0.1 with JavaLoader
• Supports creation of both XLS and XLSX
• RowSpan support.  Either by itself or with colSpan to create a range (see ugly image below)
• poi:row update attribute when working with existing templates.
• refactored the CSSRule.cfc  into cfscript, 

TODO: Work on updating the POIUtility.cfc now that the groundwork is complete.

I did yank the coldfusion_mx_7 folder, figured it's about time for people to move ahead on that one.

Tested on CommandBox with ColdFusion 2018

Go to my repo or the code https://github.com/wiggick/POIUtility.cfc

Side by side results of XLS and XLST Generation
Color, fill pattern, and region test.  (note text colors are just random selection )

Crystal Report Tricks: Using special fields in formulas

When you want to use a special field in Crystal Reports in a formula, you can specify the special field  by using the special field name without spaces.  I admit I haven't tried them all, but in this case, the comments are multi-line and I wanted to grab just the first line.

split(ReportComments,chr(13))[1]

Oracle Tricks: Getting a range of numbers

Another method for getting a range of dates from Oracle PL/SQL

select last_day(to_date(to_char(months.month) || '/1/' ||
                        to_char(years.year),
                        'mm/dd/yyyy')) as range_EOM
  from (select rownum year from dual connect by level <= 2019) years,
       (select rownum month from dual connect by level <= 12) months
 where years.year >= 2000
   and months.month >= 1

Grabbing UTC Hour from Oracle

A simple sql script for obtaining gmt hour from Oracle

select sys_extract_utc(systimestamp) as UTC,
extract(hour from sys_extract_utc(systimestamp) ) as UTC_HOUR,
extract(hour from cast(to_char(sysdate, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS') as timestamp) ) as  local_hour
from dual

ColdFusion POI:Row and updating

I was working with the POI custom tags from Ben Nadel and noticed that the tag was creating the rows rather than updating. Adding a get and check fixed the issue.

<!--- Try Getting the  row. --->
  <cfset VARIABLES.Row = VARIABLES.SheetTag.Sheet.getRow( JavaCast( "int", (VARIABLES.SheetTag.RowIndex - 1) ) )>

  <cfif ! StructKeyExists(VARIABLES, "Row")>
  <cfset VARIABLES.Row = VARIABLES.SheetTag.Sheet.CreateRow(
   JavaCast( "int", (VARIABLES.SheetTag.RowIndex - 1) )
   ) />
  </cfif>

KornShell: Replace spaces with underscores

A simple ksh that will replace a space with "_"

#!/bin/ksh
find /your/file/directory -type f -name "* *" | \
while read file; do \
newfile="$(echo "$file" | sed 's/ /_/g')"
mv "${file}" "${newfile}"
done