Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/08
Directly after a new Windows installation, I want to have my cloned git repository of batch files in the PATH persistently so that it gets searched after rebooting or opening a new console window.
At that moment, there is not much of a 1024 PATH character limitation, but be aware about that limit if you try this yourself.
This is my add-current-directory-to-path-at-end.persistent-and-limit-to-1024-characters.bat:
:: https://serverfault.com/questions/664180/can-i-permanently-add-to-path-in-windows-using-batch
:: https://superuser.com/questions/812754/how-to-recover-from-path-being-truncated-to-1024-characters-by-setx
:: global environment
setx PATH "%PATH%;%CD%"
:: local process
:: https://superuser.com/questions/975605/add-current-directory-to-path
set PATH=%PATH%;%CD%
I execute it from within the cloned git directory.
Oh: you need to double-quote the SETX parameters, otherwise you get an error message: “ERROR: Invalid syntax. Default option is not allowed more than '2' time(s).“.
More links than the above ones from the batch file, especially on the 1024 character limitation:
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/08
(All below statements were run elevated as Administrator)
I had arp -d fail with any parameter combination on one of my systems always throwing the error The ARP entry deletion failed: The parameter is incorrect..
Luckily I found out that this did clear the ARP cache correctly:
netsh interface ip delete arpcache
I found that via [Wayback/Archive] “The ARP entry deletion failed: The parameter is incorrect.” – Recherche Google:
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/07
Since every now and then, like testing software developed with older tools, you need to run older software.
This always works: [Wayback /Archive] Deploy .NET Framework 3.5 by using Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) | Microsoft Learn
DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /All
Use /All to enable all parent features of the specified feature.
(The /All is needed because software requiring .NET Framework 3.5 also require the parent features).
Notes:
- Tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11 in 2022.
- It can take a really long time (more than just a few minutes!) even on fast connections.
- Installing through Chocolatey with `choco install
dotnet3.5 fails on Windows 11 (have not tried on Windows 10) with the classical red on black PowerShell default error theme*:
ERROR: The term 'wmic' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
The install of DotNet3.5 was NOT successful.
Error while running 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\DotNet3.5\Tools\ChocolateyInstall.ps1'.
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Posted in .NET, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, C#, Chocolatey, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/01
I wrote a two earlier blog posts around puns in programming book indices before:
- the 1992 Turbo Pascal 7.0 Language Guide having both entry in the manual about Recursion (“recursive loop, see recursive loop”) which of course is similar to “infinite loop” and entries for “infinite loop See loop, infinite” and “loop, infinite See infinite loop”.
- infinite loop in “LaTeX: A Document Preparation System” by Leslie Lamport, printed in 1994.
In the last one, I promised to list more occurrences which I now finally had time for to do.
But let me first elaborate more on the observation that modern computer books (like for instance on C# and Delphi beyond version 1) lack these kinds of index pun.
On the Delphi side, the index entry joke for recursion got removed no later than Delphi 3 (I am still looking for a Delphi 2 version of the Object Pascal Language Guide, see further below) even before the book being fully redone electronically and the index pages generation being automated in
I think I even understand why that is: the process of creating of indices. By the start of this century, more and more indices were automatically being generated and for the last 2 decades or so, all of them are. Back in the days however, indices were mostly done by hand. Nowadays, with everything automated, it is actually pretty tricky in most environments to add such an “infinite loop” index entry like in the Turbo Pascal book, as it would require two things at once:
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Posted in .NET, C, C#, C++, Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2, Development, EKON, Event, History, LaTeX, LifeHacker, LISP, Mathematics, Pascal, Perl, PL/I (a.k.a. PL/1), Power User, science, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, Typesetting | Tagged: 1, 7 | 4 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/12/31
A while ago, browser tabs were overflowing again so I first mad the list of links with quotes below, then discovered there is a template for many browser tabs open at [Wayback/Archive] To many browser tabs open Meme Generator – Imgflip

One of the reasons is that the WordPress “Press This” bookmarklet is very slow and also flaky at escaping HTML (for instance the below html – Why shouldn’t &apos; be used to escape single quotes? – Stack Overflow sometimes becomes html – Why shouldn’t <code>'</code> be used to escape single quotes? – Stack Overflow in [Wayback/Archive] Press This – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org especially when running it from Archive Today archived pages).
So here we go: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, HTML, HTML5, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/12/18
While migrating from iTunes on one machine to Apple Music on another one, I needed to migrate part of the (disorganised) playlists.
I knew there was a binary ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl file, but that is encoded or encrypted, making it hard to parse.
Luckily there is also ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml which I found via the links below.
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Posted in Apple, Development, iTunes, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/12/17
Finally an easier way to convert Office documents (and other formats) to markdown: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – microsoft/markitdown: Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown. (after Google added a Markdown export feature to Google Docs about half a year ago, and basic Markdown formatting about 2 years ago – see below):
There are quite a few dependencies in [Wayback/Archive] markitdown/pyproject.toml at main · microsoft/markitdown · GitHub, so be prepared for that.
Supported formats (added links for clarity):
The MarkItDown library is a utility tool for converting various files to Markdown (e.g., for indexing, text analysis, etc.)
It presently supports:
- PDF (.pdf)
- PowerPoint (.pptx)
- Word (.docx)
- Excel (.xlsx)
- Images (EXIF metadata, and OCR)
- Audio (EXIF metadata, and speech transcription)
- HTML (special handling of Wikipedia, etc.)
- Various other text-based formats (csv, json, xml, etc.)
Google was first though:
- [Wayback/Archive] Google Workspace Updates: Compose with Markdown in Google Docs on web
- [Wayback/Archive] Google Workspace Updates: Import and export Markdown in Google Docs
There is speculation on why Microsoft introduced it just now ranging from “they need it for AI training” to “just late to the game”. I’m with the latter. Apple is even later, so if you want to convert Apple Notes to markdown, then you can use [Wayback/Archive] Import from Apple Notes – Obsidian Help.
Via various sources, including:
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Posted in CSV, Development, Excel, HTML, HTML5, JSON, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Office, PDF, Power Point, Power User, Software Development, Word, XML/XSD | Tagged: MarkDown, Python | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/12/17
Probably not fully the direction I need to search to (main goal is to interactively edit img tag attributes (basic and style) to manipulate the appearance of pictures in my blog), but should do for now:
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Posted in Bookmarklet, CSS, Development, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »