Programming Note

Last month my friend and I exchanged our computers. Unfortunately, her computer’s memory is 256MB, only a half of mine. The operating system is Windows XP but mine is Ubuntu Linux. I like writing some programmes for fun but with a low memory I can not install some softwares. Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio (Express Edition) are not fit for me any more. So I have to learn to use some lightweight softwares. (more…)

PowerShadow is an excellent software. While it is running, it seems that your hard drive is covered with a piece of transparent glass. You can see, change or delete the files, but all the changes will be lost after the computer starts up in the next time. So it is much like the hard driver recovery card, except for it is a software, not a hardware. (more…)

Emacs is a classic editor in Linux/Unix world. However, it can also run on Windows. For Windows users, ntemacs is a good choice. What I don’t like is: Emacs needs the environment variable “HOME”, and it looks for its configure file “_emacs” in the “HOME” directory. I don’t like setting environment variables because it may cause conflicts. If there is a method so that I needn’t set any environment variable, I can avoid this problem. Lukily, I found the solution: Windows script. (more…)

This is a very short note for “gzip”. “gzip” is a standard compress utility in Linux operating system. It can compress a file. Unlike WinRAR or WinZip in Windows, gzip isn’t suitable for creating an archive files which contains many files and directories (this is “tar” task).

To compress a file, e.g. foo.txt, use ‘gzip foo.txt’. It will generate a file whose name is foo.txt.gz. However, the original file, foo.txt, will be removed. To uncompress a gzip file, use ‘gunzip’. e.g. after executing ‘gunzip foo.txt.gz’, the ‘foo.txt.gz’ will be replaced by ‘foo.txt’.

Sometimes I don’t hope gzip delete my original file. For example, if I have a file named “foo.img” and I want to backup it. I can use the argument “-c”:
gzip -c foo.img > foo.img.gz

Here, “-c” means put the compressed file to the stand output device, normally it is the screen. Then I use a redirect symbol “>” to specify the output file. In this way, the original file won’t be deleted.

Notepad++ is a free text editor. It is very suitable for programming. Notepad++ supports FTP. Since I bought web hosting, I often need to edit files on my remote server. The normal way is download the file you want to edit, edit it and then upload it. However, with Notepad++, you can edit files on your remote server directly. (more…)