I have a folder on my desktop called "images".
Inside are a bunch of sub-folders called various things "Flower_Shape", "Smile_Shape", "Dog_Shape", etc. and each folder contains 3 images "Variant1.PNG", "Variant2.PNG", and "Variant3.PNG" and then some other file formats that are called various things but they do not end in .png, they end in things like ".psd"...
How can I take all of the contents of these hundreds of folders, and move them all into 1 folder while changing the names from "Variant1.png" to whatever the name of the folder it was in is called (for example the "Variant1.png" inside the folder "Flower_Shape" would be re-named "Flower_Shape-Variant1.png") and then delete every file that doesn't end in ".png".
My first main question is what language would I use to do something like this? Would it be PERL?
After that is established, does anyone have any tips for how to go about doing this... I'm assuming just a for loop with some if statements should be all it really takes but I know nothing of perl (or any other languages that deal with changing files on my own computer for that matter)
Thanks!
Mac OS X comes with a whole assortment of scripting languages. It comes with Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, and BASH.
Mac OS X also comes with Automator.
What should you choose?
If you're really, really interested in learning to program, I would suggest you start with Bash. BASH is what is called the command shell. If you type a command in at a prompt, it will be executed. The Unix shell is a powerful tool, and the BASH shell includes a lot of control structures that can be used. In BASH, you could use the find command and the mv command and write a loop to do what you want.
.
Shell scripts are limited in their power. They aren't suppose to be full service languages and make no apologies for it. If you need more than a few dozen lines or more complex control, you should switch to a scripting language.
I am a Perl programmer, but I would recommend, if you're really interested in learning how to program, to learn Python. Python is probably the most popular language and its use is certainly growing.
Perl is a nice language because much of its syntax structure comes from shell scripting languages. Despite what you've heard, Perl is still very much a popular language. I've found that people pick up Perl faster than Python because of it's looser syntax rules and the fact it doesn't have to be object oriented. That is also a major problem with Perl. Most Perl programmers never get past the basic hacking stage and Perl has a reputation of being a difficult language to maintain because of the sheer number of awful Perl scripts out there.
Ruby hasn't been as popular as Perl or Python, but it has its fans. The big power of Ruby is something called Ruby on Rails. Rails is a programming framework that allows you to quickly build web-based applications. You first should learn Ruby, then learn the Rails component.
PHP use to be the glue that held the web together. I believe its popularity has been dropping in recent years as newer web development platforms have come up. PHP is the mob rule of programming. Unlike all of the other languages, it doesn't have a single champion shaping the language and has developed a lot of detritus. It is sloppy and can be hard to maintain.
.
Still, it is the basis of a lot of web based forums and content management systems like Joomla. After all, PHP was designed to live inside of webpages.
If you don't want to learn script programming, you should try Automator. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and can allow you to build programs to do all sorts of tasks. People who have gotten into Automator have done some amazing stuff with it.
Whatever you choose, you can find some tutorials and information on the web, but if you really want to learn, you should get some good manuals. O'Reilly and Associates has a long storied history with computing and the Internet. Tim O'Reilly (the brains behind the company) has been producing computer manuals since 1978. Almost all of my books are O'Reilly books. Manning is another one, and there are dozens more. Go to a real bookstore before Amazon drives them all out of business and peruse their shelves for something you like.
You have to combine File::Find with File::Copy to reach those requirements
If you use perl, you should look into Path::Class and File:::Copy. That'll handle your path parsing. You'd want to iterate over the filesystem (Path::Class::Dir->next will be your friend here), build a destination file with something like:
my $curr_file = file('whatever_path...');
my $dest_dir = dir('some other path...');
my $dest_file = file($dest_dir, $curr_file->dir->basename . '-' . $curr_file->basename);
then use File::Copy to move:
move($curr_file, $dest_file);
Start by looking up those methods/subroutines and their usage; then you just need to code up the iteration.
I was able to accomplish this using this code (and changing the value inside the "glob" function to different levels of /// manually)
#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach my $files (glob ('*/*/*')) {
use strict;
use File::Basename;
use Cwd 'abs_path';
my $f = "$files";
my $d = basename(dirname(abs_path($f)));
my($file, $dir, $ext) = fileparse($files);
my $initialName = "$dir$file";
my $finalName = "$dir$d$file";
print("$initialName --> $finalName \n");
rename($initialName, $finalName);
}
Then it was as simple as moving the files with a move function into a new folder, like so:
#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach my $files (glob ('*/*/*')) {
use strict;
use File::Basename;
use Cwd 'abs_path';
use File::Copy;
my $f = "$files";
my $d = basename(dirname(abs_path($f)));
my($file, $dir, $ext) = fileparse($files);
my $initialLocation = "$dir$file";
my $finalLocation = "AllFiles/$file";
print("$finalLocation\n");
move($initialLocation,$finalLocation);
}
In all the projects I've worked with in other languages the bracing-style of choice has been the Allman Style(aka ANSI style). The lack of a free-form bracing style(parenthesis too) is something I miss from other C-style syntax family of languages when working in Go.
Can anyone come up with a way to make the Go compiler accept the following bracing-style?
package main
import "fmt"
func main()
{
f()
fmt.Println("Returned normally from f.")
}
func f()
{
fmt.Println("In function f.")
}
Note I am aware of the arguments for why Go was designed with such artificial 'limitation', but I'm not really buying into it. I'm a firm believer that the bracing-style used should really be decided by the coding-standard adopted by the people or company working on the code-base rather than being forced upon by the language itself.
As such please consider my question within the scope of 'how it can be done' rather than 'why not to do it and just adapt'.
Thanks
I double the braces up.
if x < 0 {
{
return sqrt(-x) + "i"
}}
It's not ideal but better than trying to scan columns 1-120 for matching braces.
This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but it is one possible way.
You could write a 'translator program,' essentially an incredibly simple compiler that converts from what you wrote, effectively a Go variant, to what the Go compiler itself expects.
You could do that with something along the lines of a program, even shell script, that applies the regular expression 's/(\n)$^\s*{/{\1/g' to the entire program (though it would need to look at the full string of the file and not break it up line-by-line, so you couldn't just pass that expression as an argument to sed, for example). Then write the converted file out to a temporary one, and run the Go compiler on it.
This method has the advantage of not requiring any changes to Go itself, though the disadvantage is that your files will not compile without your extra script. If you normally use a Makefile, this is probably fine, but sometimes could still be inconvenient.
Succinctly, no. The language is (or was a year or more ago) defined with semi-colons, and the compiler inserts semi-colons implicitly at the ends of lines - unless there's a brace at the end of the line. So, if you write a condition (which doesn't need the parentheses, please note) and do not put an open brace at the end of the line, then the Go compiler inserts one for you - leaving a null statement after the if, and the braces enclosing a block that is executed unconditionally.
#epw suggests a reformatter; I think that is a reasonable suggestion. Go comes with gofmt to convert to the canonical Go style. You'd have to write something to convert from canonical to Allman style, and vice versa, and ensure that you pre-compile your Go-Allman source into Go-canonical format before compiling it to object files. On the whole, this is more traumatic than accepting that Go has its own rules which are no more eccentric than Python's rules and that it is simplest to go with the flow and accept that coding in Go involves coding in non-Allman (approximately K&R) style. (I like and use Allman style in C; I use Go-style in Go.)
Give a try to https://gofork.org
forkgo supports allman/horstmann style:
package main
import
( "fmt"
)
func main()
{ if false
{ fmt.Println("jack")
fmt.Println("forkgo")
} else
{ fmt/
.Println("hello")
fmt.Println("forkgo")
}
}
I know the question is very subjective. But I cannot form the question in a much more better manner. I would appreciate some guidance.
I often as a developer feel how easier it would have been for me if I could have some tools for doing some reasonably complex task on a log file , or a set of source files, or some data set etc.
Clearly, when the same type of task needs to be done repetitively and when speed is critical, I can think of writing it in C++/Java.
But most of the times, it is some kind of text processing or file searching activity that I want to do only once just to perform a quick check or to do some preliminary analysis etc. In such cases, I would be better off doing the task manually rather than writing in C++/Java. But I could surely doing it in seconds if I knew some language like Bash/Python/Perl/Ruby/Sed/Awk.
I know this whole question is subjective and there is no objective definite answer, but in general what does the developer community feel as a whole? What subset of these languages should I know so that I can do all these kinds of tasks easily and improve my productivity.
Would Perl be a good choice?
It is a super set of Sed/Awk, plus it allows to write terse code. I can get done with fewer lines of code. It is neither readable nor easily maintainable, but I never wanted those features anyway.
The only thing that bothers me is the negative publiciity that Perl has got lately and it has been criticized by the Ruby/Python community a lot. Also, I am not sure if it can replace bash scripting totally.
If not, then is Perl+Bash a good combination for these kind of tasks?
I tend to do a lot of processing with ruby. It has all the functionality of perl, but I find it to be a little more readable. Both perl and ruby support the -n, -e, and -p options.
-e 'command' one line of script. Several -e's allowed. Omit [programfile]
-n assume 'while gets(); ... end' loop around your script
-p assume loop like -n but print line also like sed
For example in ruby
seq 1 4 | ruby -ne 'BEGIN{ $product = 1 }; $product *= $_.to_i; END { puts $product }'
24
Which is very similar to perl
seq 1 4 | perl -ne 'BEGIN{ $product = 1 }; $product *= $_; END { print $product }'
24
In Python, the same would look like this:
seq 1 4 | python -c 'import sys; print reduce(lambda x,y : int(x)*int(y), sys.stdin.read().splitlines(True))'
24
While it's possible to do the above in bash/awk/sed, you'll be limited by their lack of more advanced features.
Python is more expressive and readable than bash, but requires more setup: import os and so on. For simple tasks, bash is quicker -- which is the most important for this. And don't underestimate the power of input/output redirection in bash!
I would use Perl over a bash/sed/awk combination. Why ?
You only have the one executable, rather than spawning off multiple executables to do work.
You can make use of a wide range of Perl modules to do most anything (see CPAN for the modules available)
In fact I would recommend any scripting language over the shell/awk/sed combination, for the same reasons. I don't have a problem with sed/awk per se, but as your required solutions become more complex/lengthy, I find the more powerful scripting languages more scalable, and (to some degree) refactorable for re-use.
I find Python+Bash a very nice combo.
I usually use Python because it's very readable and maintainable. And because there are lots of online documentation available.
Btw, I suggest you to read http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-python/
With shell scripting, all you ever need to know is a bit bash/sh and a lot of awk. Bash for calling your commands, and awk for processing. Some of the unix tools below, contrary to the fact that many people use them, are not necessary because awk can do their functions.
1) cut
2) sed
3) wc
4) (e)grep
5) cat
6) head
7) etc..
and a few others whose functions overlap. In the end, your script will not cluttered with redundant tools and slow down your script.
Perl/Python are very useful sysadmin tools as well. Both of them do similar things and have libraries that help in your sysadmin tasks. The only significant difference is, aesthetically speaking, the appearance of your code written in them.
You can learn about Ruby if you want, but in terms of sysadmin, I would say go for Perl/Python instead.
In the time it took you to write those few paragraphs, you could have already learned enough Python to make your life significantly better.
Anyone who already knows C++ or Java can become productive in Python in about 4 hours. Just read the tutorial.
My first port of call is bash with sed to provide regular expression processing. You can do a lot with a bash for loop, grep and some regular expressions.
It's worth learning regular expressions if you don't already know them. An editor which lets you use them (like vi) is extremely useful when manipulating files (e.g. you have a set of data extracted from a logfile, and you need to turn it into a set of SQL statements for example).
If it takes me more than a few minutes to figure out how to do whatever parsing task I'm trying to do in bash/sed, I usually end up using perl instead. As suggested by ikkebr, python is probably as good as (or better than) perl; I just had the misfortune to learn perl first, so am much more familiar with it - if I was to start again, I'd learn python instead I think.
I remember reading in Douglas Crockford's "Javascript the Good Parts" book that there is potential for error with blockless statements because of automatic semicolon insertion.
if (condition)
foo = true;
vs
if (condition)
{
foo = true;
}
In the second the example it will work consistently, in the first example a semicolon will be automatically inserted by the interpreter and can lead to ambiguity in the code. As Douglas points out this is potentially bad and hard to debug, which I agree. But it got me thinking are there examples where coding "style" actually has syntax implications? In other words, examples where failing to follow a certain indentation or apparent style actually results in a bug or error. I suppose Python with its significant whitespace is an example, YML with its requirement for no tabs is another.
Feel free to respond in a wide variety of languages and idioms. I am curious to hear about the paradigm cases. In your answer I would like to know the WHAT and the WHY of the coding style or syntax behavior. I don't want to start any coding style flame wars, just matter of fact scenarios where the uninitiated would get tripped up.
Javascript treats these two cases seperately. You have to use the first
return {
// code
}
return
{
// code
}
If you do not the interpreter adds semi colons in the wrong places. I think it puts one after the condition. So the second would be read wrongly as.
return;
{
// code
}
Which is not invalid syntax.
No one has mentioned it before, but one point of style is to write
if (NULL==p) // ...
instead of
if (p==NULL) // ...
The two are functionally equivalent so it's a matter of style. Many prefer the style at the top, because if you type "=" by mistake instead of "==", the first won't compile whereas the second will, and creates a bug that is hard to find (though some compilers now give you a warning for if (p=NULL)).
A coding style is not only for readability. There are some other factors like
Avoid common language pitfalls (silent fails, exceptions while casting etc.)
Ease of maintenance
Increase the clarity of code (e.g. private functions always starting loweCase and public beeing PascalCase)
Enforcing conventions (e.g. not using multiple inheritance or always inherit public in c++)
an example for ease of maintenacne is below:
if(x) return true;
vs.
if(x)
{
return true;
}
it is clear the second is easier to maintain, because i can simply go ahead and add a new line and add a call to bla() without having to add brackets before.
In Python, the whitespace indentation, rather than curly braces or keywords, delimits the statement blocks. An increase in indentation comes after certain statements; a decrease in indentation signifies the end of the current block.
Whitespace is not significant in any of the C family of languages, except to separate certain language tokens. The layout of the source code has no effect on the executable produced by the compiler.
In C++, there's a difference between
vector<pair<int,int>>
and
vector<pair<int,int> >
because >> is treated as a single token by the parser.
Every time I open a parentheses, brace, single or double quote I always close it and then go back to write the statement, condition, etc... This saves me from quite some possibly big mistakes!
It depends on the language. In the curly family C/C++/Java/C#, whitespace is not the restriction as long as your braces are opened and closed properly.
In languages like VB where paired keywords are used, just because keywords delimit functions you can't have
Private Sub someFunction() End Sub
But in C, C++ and other curly languages, you can have
void someFunction() { }
In python, I guess its a completely different matter.
It all depends on the particular language. As per your specific example, I don't think there is a syntactical or semantic difference between the two.
It is language dependant.
For instance in Java
void someFunction() { }
and
void someFunction() {
}
and
void someFunction()
{
}
will have no implication whatsoever. However Sun has enlisted a list of coding conventions if you are interested you could read them here.
These are mainly for maintainability and readability of code but need not be strictly followed.
The title wasn't specific to conditional blocks, so this came to mind:
I don't see it mentioned yet, but one thing to consider is how do you find things with simple tools (like grep and its inferior implementations from windowsland).
For example consider this (admittedly a bit contrived) example
class Foo
// vs.
class
Foo
You can find former with regex "class\s+Foo", but for latter you'll have to have a specialized tool that can parse C++/C#/java.
This applies also in C for function prototypes, some weird people prefer
void
bar (void)
// to
void bar(void)
While you can generally assume that if in front of function name are some A-Z characters, then it's very likely definiton/declaration.
Actually when it comes to ifblocks, then placing the brace has very big impact on debugging code in Visual Studio 200x. When it steps into function/block, it will place text/execution line cursor on opening bracket. So if the bracket happens to be waaaaay on the right side, the code window has to scroll there and buggeritall stays there. Extremely annoying.
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I've read some of the recent language vs. language questions with interest... Perl vs. Python, Python vs. Java, Can one language be better than another?
One thing I've noticed is that a lot of us have very superficial reasons for disliking languages. We notice these things at first glance and they turn us off. We shun what are probably perfectly good languages as a result of features that we'd probably learn to love or ignore in 2 seconds if we bothered.
Well, I'm as guilty as the next guy, if not more. Here goes:
Ruby: All the Ruby example code I see uses the puts command, and that's a sort of childish Yiddish anatomical term. So as a result, I can't take Ruby code seriously even though I should.
Python: The first time I saw it, I smirked at the whole significant whitespace thing. I avoided it for the next several years. Now I hardly use anything else.
Java: I don't like identifiersThatLookLikeThis. I'm not sure why exactly.
Lisp: I have trouble with all the parentheses. Things of different importance and purpose (function declarations, variable assignments, etc.) are not syntactically differentiated and I'm too lazy to learn what's what.
Fortran: uppercase everything hurts my eyes. I know modern code doesn't have to be written like that, but most example code is...
Visual Basic: it bugs me that Dim is used to declare variables, since I remember the good ol' days of GW-BASIC when it was only used to dimension arrays.
What languages did look right to me at first glance? Perl, C, QBasic, JavaScript, assembly language, BASH shell, FORTH.
Okay, now that I've aired my dirty laundry... I want to hear yours. What are your language hangups? What superficial features bother you? How have you gotten over them?
I hate Hate HATE "End Function" and "End IF" and "If... Then" parts of VB. I would much rather see a curly bracket instead.
PHP's function name inconsistencies.
// common parameters back-to-front
in_array(needle, haystack);
strpos(haystack, needle);
// _ to separate words, or not?
filesize();
file_exists;
// super globals prefix?
$GLOBALS;
$_POST;
I never really liked the keywords spelled backwards in some scripting shells
if-then-fi is bad enough, but case-in-esac is just getting silly
I just thought of another... I hate the mostly-meaningless URLs used in XML to define namespaces, e.g. xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
Pascal's Begin and End. Too verbose, not subject to bracket matching, and worse, there isn't a Begin for every End, eg.
Type foo = Record
// ...
end;
Although I'm mainly a PHP developer, I dislike languages that don't let me do enough things inline. E.g.:
$x = returnsArray();
$x[1];
instead of
returnsArray()[1];
or
function sort($a, $b) {
return $a < $b;
}
usort($array, 'sort');
instead of
usort($array, function($a, $b) { return $a < $b; });
I like object-oriented style. So it bugs me in Python to see len(str) to get the length of a string, or splitting strings like split(str, "|") in another language. That is fine in C; it doesn't have objects. But Python, D, etc. do have objects and use obj.method() other places. (I still think Python is a great language.)
Inconsistency is another big one for me. I do not like inconsistent naming in the same library: length(), size(), getLength(), getlength(), toUTFindex() (why not toUtfIndex?), Constant, CONSTANT, etc.
The long names in .NET bother me sometimes. Can't they shorten DataGridViewCellContextMenuStripNeededEventArgs somehow? What about ListViewVirtualItemsSelectionRangeChangedEventArgs?
And I hate deep directory trees. If a library/project has a 5 level deep directory tree, I'm going to have trouble with it.
C and C++'s syntax is a bit quirky. They reuse operators for different things. You're probably so used to it that you don't think about it (nor do I), but consider how many meanings parentheses have:
int main() // function declaration / definition
printf("hello") // function call
(int)x // type cast
2*(7+8) // override precedence
int (*)(int) // function pointer
int x(3) // initializer
if (condition) // special part of syntax of if, while, for, switch
And if in C++ you saw
foo<bar>(baz(),baaz)
you couldn't know the meaning without the definition of foo and bar.
the < and > might be a template instantiation, or might be less-than and greater-than (unusual but legal)
the () might be a function call, or might be just surrounding the comma operator (ie. perform baz() for size-effects, then return baaz).
The silly thing is that other languages have copied some of these characteristics!
Java, and its checked exceptions. I left Java for a while, dwelling in the .NET world, then recently came back.
It feels like, sometimes, my throws clause is more voluminous than my method content.
There's nothing in the world I hate more than php.
Variables with $, that's one extra odd character for every variable.
Members are accessed with -> for no apparent reason, one extra character for every member access.
A freakshow of language really.
No namespaces.
Strings are concatenated with ..
A freakshow of language.
All the []s and #s in Objective C. Their use is so different from the underlying C's native syntax that the first time I saw them it gave the impression that all the object-orientation had been clumsily bolted on as an afterthought.
I abhor the boiler plate verbosity of Java.
writing getters and setters for properties
checked exception handling and all the verbiage that implies
long lists of imports
Those, in connection with the Java convention of using veryLongVariableNames, sometimes have me thinking I'm back in the 80's, writing IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. at the top of my programs.
Hint: If you can automate the generation of part of your code in your IDE, that's a good hint that you're producing boilerplate code. With automated tools, it's not a problem to write, but it's a hindrance every time someone has to read that code - which is more often.
While I think it goes a bit overboard on type bureaucracy, Scala has successfully addressed some of these concerns.
Coding Style inconsistencies in team projects.
I'm working on a large team project where some contributors have used 4 spaces instead of the tab character.
Working with their code can be very annoying - I like to keep my code clean and with a consistent style.
It's bad enough when you use different standards for different languages, but in a web project with HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL, that's 5 languages, 5 different styles, and multiplied by the number of people working on the project.
I'd love to re-format my co-workers code when I need to fix something, but then the repository would think I changed every line of their code.
It irritates me sometimes how people expect there to be one language for all jobs. Depending on the task you are doing, each language has its advantages and disadvantages. I like the C-based syntax languages because it's what I'm most used to and I like the flexibility they tend to bestow on the developer. Of course, with great power comes great responsibility, and having the power to write 150 line LINQ statements doesn't mean you should.
I love the inline XML in the latest version of VB.NET although I don't like working with VB mainly because I find the IDE less helpful than the IDE for C#.
If Microsoft had to invent yet another C++-like language in C# why didn't they correct Java's mistake and implement support for RAII?
Case sensitivity.
What kinda hangover do you need to think that differentiating two identifiers solely by caSE is a great idea?
I hate semi-colons. I find they add a lot of noise and you rarely need to put two statements on a line. I prefer the style of Python and other languages... end of line is end of a statement.
Any language that can't fully decide if Arrays/Loop/string character indexes are zero based or one based.
I personally prefer zero based, but any language that mixes the two, or lets you "configure" which is used can drive you bonkers. (Apache Velocity - I'm looking in your direction!)
snip from the VTL reference (default is 1, but you can set it to 0):
# Default starting value of the loop
# counter variable reference.
directive.foreach.counter.initial.value = 1
(try merging 2 projects that used different counter schemes - ugh!)
In no particular order...
OCaml
Tuples definitions use * to separate items rather than ,. So, ("Juliet", 23, true) has the type (string * int * bool).
For being such an awesome language, the documentation has this haunting comment on threads: "The threads library is implemented by time-sharing on a single processor. It will not take advantage of multi-processor machines. Using this library will therefore never make programs run faster." JoCaml doesn't fix this problem.
^^^ I've heard the Jane Street guys were working to add concurrent GC and multi-core threads to OCaml, but I don't know how successful they've been. I can't imagine a language without multi-core threads and GC surviving very long.
No easy way to explore modules in the toplevel. Sure, you can write module q = List;; and the toplevel will happily print out the module definition, but that just seems hacky.
C#
Lousy type inference. Beyond the most trivial expressions, I have to give types to generic functions.
All the LINQ code I ever read uses method syntax, x.Where(item => ...).OrderBy(item => ...). No one ever uses expression syntax, from item in x where ... orderby ... select. Between you and me, I think expression syntax is silly, if for no other reason than that it looks "foreign" against the backdrop of all other C# and VB.NET code.
LINQ
Every other language uses the industry standard names are Map, Fold/Reduce/Inject, and Filter. LINQ has to be different and uses Select, Aggregate, and Where.
Functional Programming
Monads are mystifying. Having seen the Parser monad, Maybe monad, State, and List monads, I can understand perfectly how the code works; however, as a general design pattern, I can't seem to look at problems and say "hey, I bet a monad would fit perfect here".
Ruby
GRRRRAAAAAAAH!!!!! I mean... seriously.
VB
Module Hangups
Dim _juliet as String = "Too Wordy!"
Public Property Juliet() as String
Get
Return _juliet
End Get
Set (ByVal value as String)
_juliet = value
End Set
End Property
End Module
And setter declarations are the bane of my existence. Alright, so I change the data type of my property -- now I need to change the data type in my setter too? Why doesn't VB borrow from C# and simply incorporate an implicit variable called value?
.NET Framework
I personally like Java casing convention: classes are PascalCase, methods and properties are camelCase.
In C/C++, it annoys me how there are different ways of writing the same code.
e.g.
if (condition)
{
callSomeConditionalMethod();
}
callSomeOtherMethod();
vs.
if (condition)
callSomeConditionalMethod();
callSomeOtherMethod();
equate to the same thing, but different people have different styles. I wish the original standard was more strict about making a decision about this, so we wouldn't have this ambiguity. It leads to arguments and disagreements in code reviews!
I found Perl's use of "defined" and "undefined" values to be so useful that I have trouble using scripting languages without it.
Perl:
($lastname, $firstname, $rest) = split(' ', $fullname);
This statement performs well no matter how many words are in $fullname. Try it in Python, and it explodes if $fullname doesn't contain exactly three words.
SQL, they say you should not use cursors and when you do, you really understand why...
its so heavy going!
DECLARE mycurse CURSOR LOCAL FAST_FORWARD READ_ONLY
FOR
SELECT field1, field2, fieldN FROM atable
OPEN mycurse
FETCH NEXT FROM mycurse INTO #Var1, #Var2, #VarN
WHILE ##fetch_status = 0
BEGIN
-- do something really clever...
FETCH NEXT FROM mycurse INTO #Var1, #Var2, #VarN
END
CLOSE mycurse
DEALLOCATE mycurse
Although I program primarily in python, It irks me endlessly that lambda body's must be expressions.
I'm still wrapping my brain around JavaScript, and as a whole, Its mostly acceptable. Why is it so hard to create a namespace. In TCL they're just ugly, but in JavaScript, it's actually a rigmarole AND completely unreadable.
In SQL how come everything is just one, huge freekin SELECT statement.
In Ruby, I very strongly dislike how methods do not require self. to be called on current instance, but properties do (otherwise they will clash with locals); i.e.:
def foo()
123
end
def foo=(x)
end
def bar()
x = foo() # okay, same as self.foo()
x = foo # not okay, reads unassigned local variable foo
foo = 123 # not okay, assigns local variable foo
end
To my mind, it's very inconsistent. I'd rather prefer to either always require self. in all cases, or to have a sigil for locals.
Java's packages. I find them complex, more so because I am not a corporation.
I vastly prefer namespaces. I'll get over it, of course - I'm playing with the Android SDK, and Eclipse removes a lot of the pain. I've never had a machine that could run it interactively before, and now I do I'm very impressed.
Prolog's if-then-else syntax.
x -> y ; z
The problem is that ";" is the "or" operator, so the above looks like "x implies y or z".
Java
Generics (Java version of templates) are limited. I can not call methods of the class and I can not create instances of the class. Generics are used by containers, but I can use containers of instances of Object.
No multiple inheritance. If a multiple inheritance use does not lead to diamond problem, it should be allowed. It should allow to write a default implementation of interface methods, a example of problem: the interface MouseListener has 5 methods, one for each event. If I want to handle just one of them, I have to implement the 4 other methods as an empty method.
It does not allow to choose to manually manage memory of some objects.
Java API uses complex combination of classes to do simple tasks. Example, if I want to read from a file, I have to use many classes (FileReader, FileInputStream).
Python
Indentation is part of syntax, I prefer to use the word "end" to indicate end of block and the word "pass" would not be needed.
In classes, the word "self" should not be needed as argument of functions.
C++
Headers are the worst problem. I have to list the functions in a header file and implement them in a cpp file. It can not hide dependencies of a class. If a class A uses the class B privately as a field, if I include the header of A, the header of B will be included too.
Strings and arrays came from C, they do not provide a length field. It is difficult to control if std::string and std::vector will use stack or heap. I have to use pointers with std::string and std::vector if I want to use assignment, pass as argument to a function or return it, because its "=" operator will copy entire structure.
I can not control the constructor and destructor. It is difficult to create an array of objects without a default constructor or choose what constructor to use with if and switch statements.
In most languages, file access. VB.NET is the only language so far where file access makes any sense to me. I do not understand why if I want to check if a file exists, I should use File.exists("") or something similar instead of creating a file object (actually FileInfo in VB.NET) and asking if it exists. And then if I want to open it, I ask it to open: (assuming a FileInfo object called fi) fi.OpenRead, for example. Returns a stream. Nice. Exactly what I wanted. If I want to move a file, fi.MoveTo. I can also do fi.CopyTo. What is this nonsense about not making files full-fledged objects in most languages? Also, if I want to iterate through the files in a directory, I can just create the directory object and call .GetFiles. Or I can do .GetDirectories, and I get a whole new set of DirectoryInfo objects to play with.
Admittedly, Java has some of this file stuff, but this nonsense of having to have a whole object to tell it how to list files is just silly.
Also, I hate ::, ->, => and all other multi-character operators except for <= and >= (and maybe -- and ++).
[Disclaimer: i only have a passing familiarity with VB, so take my comments with a grain of salt]
I Hate How Every Keyword In VB Is Capitalized Like This. I saw a blog post the other week (month?) about someone who tried writing VB code without any capital letters (they did something to a compiler that would let them compile VB code like that), and the language looked much nicer!
My big hangup is MATLAB's syntax. I use it, and there are things I like about it, but it has so many annoying quirks. Let's see.
Matrices are indexed with parentheses. So if you see something like Image(350,260), you have no clue from that whether we're getting an element from the Image matrix, or if we're calling some function called Image and passing arguments to it.
Scope is insane. I seem to recall that for loop index variables stay in scope after the loop ends.
If you forget to stick a semicolon after an assignment, the value will be dumped to standard output.
You may have one function per file. This proves to be very annoying for organizing one's work.
I'm sure I could come up with more if I thought about it.