Visual Works smalltalk, how to convert Ascii values to characters - ascii

using visualworks, in small talk, I'm receiving a string like '31323334' from a network connection.
I need a string that reads '1234' so I need a way of extracting two characters at a time, converting them to what they represent in ascii, and then building a string of them...
Is there a way to do so?
EDIT(7/24): for some reason many of you are assuming I will only be working with numbers and could just truncate 3s or read every other char. This is not the case, examples of strings read could include any keys on the US standard keyboard (a-z, A-Z,0-9,punctuation/annotation such as {}*&^%$...)

Following along the lines of what Max started to suggest:
x := '31323334'.
in := ReadStream on: x.
out := WriteStream on: String new.
[ in atEnd ] whileFalse: [ out nextPut: (in next digitValue * 16 + (in next digitValue)) asCharacter ].
newX := out contents.
newX will have the result '1234'. Or, if you start with:
x := '454647'
You will get a result of 'EFG'.
Note that digitValue might only recognize upper case hex digits, so an asUppercase may be needed on the string before processing.

There is usually a #fold: or #reduce: method that will let you do that. In Pharo there's also a message #allPairsDo: and #groupsOf:atATimeCollect:. Using one of these methods you could do:
| collectionOfBytes |
collectionOfBytes := '9798'
groupsOf: 2
atATimeCollect: [ :group |
(group first digitValue * 10) + (group second digitValue) ].
collectionOfBytes asByteArray asString "--> 'ab'"
The #digitValue message in Pharo simply returns the value of the digit for numerical characters.
If you're receiving the data on a stream you could replace #groupsOf:atATime: with a loop (result may be any collection that you then convert to a string like above):
...
[ stream atEnd ] whileFalse: [
result add: (stream next digitValue * 10) + (stream next digitValue) ]
...

in Smalltalk/X, there is a method called "fromHexBytes:" which the ByteArray class understands. I am not sure, but think that something similar exists in other ST dialects.
If present, you can solve this with:
(ByteArray fromHexString:'68656C6C6F31323334') asString
and the reverse would be:
'hello1234' asByteArray hexPrintString
Another possible solution is to read the string as a hex number,
fetch the digitBytes (which should give you a byte array) and then convert that to a string.
I.e.
(Integer readFrom:'68656C6C6F31323334' radix:16)
digitBytes asString
One problem with that is that I am not sure about which byte-order you will get the digitBytes (LSB or MSB), and if that is defined to be the same across architectures or converted at image loading time to use the native order. So it may be required to reverse the string at the end (to be portable, it may even be required to reverse it conditionally, depending on the endianess of the system.
I cannot test this on VisualWorks, but I assume it should work fine there, too.

Related

Ruby: Why does unpack('Q') give a different result than manual conversion?

I'm trying to write a function that will .unpack('Q') (unpack to uint64_t) without access to the unpack method.
When I manually convert from string to binary to uint64, I get a different result than .unpack('Q'):
Integer('abcdefgh'.unpack('B*').first, 2) # => 7017280452245743464
'abcdefgh'.unpack('Q').first # => 7523094288207667809
I don't understand what's happening here.
I also don't understand why the output of .unpack('Q') is fixed regardless of the size of the input. If I add a thousand characters after 'abcdefgh' and then unpack('Q') it, I still just get [7523094288207667809]?
Byte order matters:
Integer('abcdefgh'.
each_char.
flat_map { |c| c.unpack('B*') }.
reverse.
join, 2)
#⇒ 7523094288207667809
'abcdefgh'.unpack('Q*').first
#⇒ 7523094288207667809
Your code produces the wrong result because after converting to binary, bytes should be reversed.
For the last part of your question, the reason the output of .unpack('Q') doesn't change with a longer input string is because the format is specifying a single 64-bit value so any characters after the first 8 are ignored. If you specified a format of Q2 and a 16 character string you'd decode 2 values:
> 'abcdefghihjklmno'.unpack('Q2')
=> [7523094288207667809, 8029475498074204265]
and again you'd find adding additional characters wouldn't change the result:
> 'abcdefghihjklmnofoofoo'.unpack('Q2')
=> [7523094288207667809, 8029475498074204265]
A format of Q* would return as many values as multiples of 64-bits were in the input:
> 'abcdefghihjklmnopqrstuvw'.unpack('Q*')
=> [7523094288207667809, 8029475498074204265, 8608196880778817904]
> 'abcdefghihjklmnopqrstuvwxyz'.unpack('Q*')
=> [7523094288207667809, 8029475498074204265, 8608196880778817904]

Ruby pack and Latin (high-ASCII) characters

An action outputs a fixed-length string via Ruby's pack function
clean = [edc_unico, sequenza_sede, cliente_id.to_s, nome, indirizzo, cap, comune, provincia, persona, note, telefono, email]
string = clean.pack('A15A5A6A40A35A5A30A2A40A40A18A25')
However, the data is in UTF-8 as to allow latin/high-ascii characters. The result of the pack action is logical. high-ascii characters take the space of 2 regular ascii characters. The resulting string is shortened by 1 space character, defeating the original purpose.
What would be a concise ruby command to interpret high-ascii characters and thus add an extra space at the end of each variable for each high-ascii character, so that the length can be brought to its proper target? (note: I am assuming there is no directive that addresses this specifically, and the whole lot of pack directives is mind-muddling)
update an example where the second line shifts positions based on accented characters
CNFrigo 539 Via Privata Da Via Iseo 6C 20098San Giuliano Milanese MI02 98282410 02 98287686 12886480156 12886480156 Bo3 Euro Giuseppe Frigo Transport 349 2803433 M.Gianoli#Delanchy.Fr S.Galliard#Delanchy.Fr
CNIn's M 497 Via Istituto S.Maria della Pietà, 30173Venezia Ve041 8690111 340 6311408 0041 5136113 00115180283 02896940273 B60Fm Euro Per Documentazioni Tecniche Inviare Materiale A : Silvia_Scarpa#Insmercato.It Amministrazione : Michela_Bianco#Insmercato.It Silvia Scarpa Per Liberatorie 041/5136171 Sig.Ra Bianco Per Pagamento Fatture 041/5136111 (Solo Il Giovedi Pomeriggio Dalle 14 All Beniservizi.Insmercato#Pec.Gruppopam.It
It looks like you are trying to use pack to format strings to fixed width columns for display. That’s not what it’s for, it is generally used for packing data into fixed byte structures for things like network protocols.
You probably want to use a format string instead, which is better suited for manipulating data for display.
Have a look at String#% (i.e. the % method on string). Like pack it uses another little language which is defined in Kernel#sprintf.
Taking a simplified example, with the two arrays:
plain = ["Iseo", "Next field"]
accent = ["Pietà", "Next field"]
then using pack like this:
puts plain.pack("A10A10")
puts accent.pack("A10A10")
will produce a result that looks like this, where “Next field” isn’t aligned since pack is dealing with the width in bytes, not the displayed width:
Iseo Next field
Pietà Next field
Using a format string, like this:
puts "%-10s%-10s" % plain
puts "%-10s%-10s" % accent
produces the desired result, since it is dealing with the displayable width:
Iseo Next field
Pietà Next field

In TI-BASIC, how do I add a variable in the middle of a String?

I am wondering how to make something where if X=5 and Y=2, then have it output something like
Hello 2 World 5.
In Java I would do
String a = "Hello " + Y + " World " + X;
System.out.println(a);
So how would I do that in TI-BASIC?
You have two issues to work out, concatenating strings and converting integers to a string representation.
String concatenation is very straightforward and utilizes the + operator. In your example:
"Hello " + "World"
Will yield the string "Hello World'.
Converting numbers to strings is not as easy in TI-BASIC, but a method for doing so compatible with the TI-83+/84+ series is available here. The following code and explanation are quoted from the linked page:
:"?
:For(X,1,1+log(N
:sub("0123456789",ipart(10fpart(N10^(-X)))+1,1)+Ans
:End
:sub(Ans,1,length(Ans)-1?Str1
With our number stored in N, we loop through each digit of N and store
the numeric character to our string that is at the matching position
in our substring. You access the individual digit in the number by
using iPart(10fPart(A/10^(X, and then locate where it is in the string
"0123456789". The reason you need to add 1 is so that it works with
the 0 digit.
In order to construct a string with all of the digits of the number, we first create a dummy string. This is what the "? is used
for. Each time through the For( loop, we concatenate the string from
before (which is still stored in the Ans variable) to the next numeric
character that is found in N. Using Ans allows us to not have to use
another string variable, since Ans can act like a string and it gets
updated accordingly, and Ans is also faster than a string variable.
By the time we are done with the For( loop, all of our numeric characters are put together in Ans. However, because we stored a dummy
character to the string initially, we now need to remove it, which we
do by getting the substring from the first character to the second to
last character of the string. Finally, we store the string to a more
permanent variable (in this case, Str1) for future use.
Once converted to a string, you can simply use the + operator to concatenate your string literals with the converted number strings.
You should also take a look at a similar Stack Overflow question which addresses a similar issue.
For this issue you can use the toString( function which was introduced in version 5.2.0. This function translates a number to a string which you can use to display numbers and strings together easily. It would end up like this:
Disp "Hello "+toString(Y)+" World "+toString(X)
If you know the length of "Hello" and "World," then you can simply use Output() because Disp creates a new line after every statement.

Automatically increment filename VideoWriter MATLAB

I have MATLAB set to record three webcams at the same time. I want to capture and save each feed to a file and automatically increment it the file name, it will be replaced by experiment_0001.avi, followed by experiment_0002.avi, etc.
My code looks like this at the moment
set(vid1,'LoggingMode','disk');
set(vid2,'LoggingMode','disk');
avi1 = VideoWriter('X:\ABC\Data Collection\Presentations\Correct\ExperimentA_002.AVI');
avi2 = VideoWriter('X:\ABC\Data Collection\Presentations\Correct\ExperimentB_002.AVI');
set(vid1,'DiskLogger',avi1);
set(vid2,'DiskLogger',avi2);
and I am incrementing the 002 each time.
Any thoughts on how to implement this efficiently?
Thanks.
dont forget matlab has some roots to C programming language. That means things like sprintf will work
so since you are printing out an integer value zero padded to 3 spaces you would need something like this sprintf('%03d',n) then % means there is a value to print that isn't text. 0 means zero pad on the left, 3 means pad to 3 digits, d means the number itself is an integer
just use sprintf in place of a string. the s means String print formatted. so it will output a string. here is an idea of what you might do
set(vid1,'LoggingMode','disk');
set(vid2,'LoggingMode','disk');
for (n=1:2:max_num_captures)
avi1 = VideoWriter(sprintf('X:\ABC\Data Collection\Presentations\Correct\ExperimentA_%03d.AVI',n));
avi2 = VideoWriter(sprintf('X:\ABC\Data Collection\Presentations\Correct\ExperimentB_002.AVI',n));
set(vid1,'DiskLogger',avi1);
set(vid2,'DiskLogger',avi2);
end

Ruby: Fuzzing through all unicode characters ‎(UTF8/Encoding/String Manipulation)

I can't iterate over the entire range of unicode characters.
I searched everywhere...
I am building a fuzzer and want to embed into a url, all unicode characters (one at a time).
For example:
http://www.example.com?a=\uff1c
I know that there are some built tools but I need more flexibility.
If i could do someting like the following: "\u" + "ff1c" it would be great.
This is the closest I got:
char = "\u0000"
...
#within iteration
char.succ!
...
but after the character "\u0039", which is the number 9, I will get "10" instead of ":"
You could use pack to convert numbers to UTF8 characters but I'm not sure if this solves your problem.
You can either create an array with numeric values of all the characters and use pack to get an UTF8 string or you can just loop from 0 to whatever you need and use pack within the loop.
I've written a small example to explain myself. The code below prints out the hex value of each character followed by the character itself.
0.upto(100) do |i|
puts "%04x" % i + ": " + [i].pack("U*")
end
Here's some simpler code, albeit slightly obfuscated, that takes advantage of the fact that Ruby will convert an integer on the right hand side of the << operator to a codepoint. This only works with Ruby 1.8 up for integer values <= 255. It will work for values greater than 255 in 1.9.
0.upto(100) do |i|
puts "" << i
end

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