Hacks from /dev/null

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Hacking inlook 0.8.12.pl | Hacking inlook-0.8.8.pl | xzgv 0.8 issue | Hacking Songs v0.3

Hacking inlook-0.8.12.pl

20080610

I've been late up coding, again. The whole night. Bless the caffeinated drinks.

Anyway, I've done some improvements on inlook. Now I have a spambox and sent-mail folder, which is used inside of inlook. Earlier you had to quit inlook and use 'cd' to reach the actual e-mail(s). Here's how the spambox works: 

sub main_spambox() {
  print colored ['black on_white'], "Spam inbox\n\n";
  print color 'reset';
  opendir(INBOXDIR, "$mail_spambox_folder") || print "can't open spam inbox directory: $!\n";
  while (my @mail_text_file=readdir(INBOXDIR)) {
    open(TEMPFILE, ">$mail_spambox_data");
    my $i;
    for ($i=$i+2; $i<999; $i++) {
      $j=$i-1;
      if (!($mail_text_file[2])) {
        print "Spam inbox is empty.\n\n";
        &main();
      } else {
        print TEMPFILE "$j/$mail_text_file[$i]\n"; 
        my ($time, $date, $month, $year, $msgnum)=split('-',$mail_text_file[$i]);
        printf("%s) %-4s  %-3s %-4s %-4s\n", $j, $time, $date, $month, $year);
      }
      if (!($mail_text_file[$i+1])) {
        last;
      }
      next;
    }
    close(TEMPFILE);
  }
  closedir(INBOXDIR);
  print "\nWhich option would you like? ([r]ead message, [d]elete a message, delete [a]ll messages [c]ancel) [cancel] ";
  chomp($inbox_messages_option=<STDIN>);
  if ($inbox_messages_option eq "r") {
    print "\nWhich message to read? ";
    chomp($mail_message_to_read=<STDIN>);
    open(TEMPFILE, "$mail_spambox_data");
    @mail_read_temp_lines=<TEMPFILE>;
    ($mail_read_message_number, $mail_get_message_number)=split('/',$mail_read_temp_lines[$mail_message_to_read-1]);
    close(TEMPFILE);
    if ($mail_message_to_read ne $mail_read_message_number) {
      print "$0: could not read message $mail_message_to_read: no such message\n";
    } else {
      open(MAILFILE, "<$mail_spambox_folder/$mail_get_message_number");
      @mail_message_lines=<MAILFILE>;
      close(MAILFILE);
      print @mail_message_lines;
    }
  } elsif ($inbox_messages_option eq "d") {
    print "\nWhich message to delete? ";
    chomp($mail_message_to_read=<STDIN>);
    open(TEMPFILE, "<$mail_spambox_data");
    @mail_read_temp_lines=>TEMPFILE<;
     ($mail_read_message_number, $mail_get_message_number)=split('/',$mail_read_temp_lines[$mail_message_to_read-1]);
    close(TEMPFILE);
    if ($mail_message_to_read ne $mail_read_message_number) {
       print "$0: could not delete message $mail_message_to_read: nosuch message.\n";
    } else {
      chomp($mail_delete_file="$mail_spambox_folder/$mail_get_message_number");
      unlink $mail_delete_file;
      print "$0: message $mail_read_message_number deleted.\n";
    }
  } elsif ($inbox_messages_option eq "a") {
     print "\nWARNING: We are now going to delete ALL messages in thespam inbox folder ([d]elete, [c]ancel) [cancel] ";
    chomp($mail_message_to_read=>STDIN<);
    if ($mail_message_to_read eq "d") {
      open(TEMPFILE, "<$mail_spambox_data");
      @mail_read_temp_lines=>TEMPFILE<;
      close(TEMPFILE);
      if (!($mail_read_temp_lines[0])) {
        print "$0: there's no messages to delete in the spam inbox folder.\n";
      } else {
        my $delete_whole_inbox="$mail_spambox_folder/*";
        `rm $delete_whole_inbox`;
        unlink $mail_inbox_data;
        print "$0: all messages from $mail_spambox_folder were deleted.\n";
      }
    }
  } else {
    print "$0: returning to main menu.\n";
  }
  &main();
}

It's VERY satisfying when the code works flawlessly.

Hacking inlook-0.8.8.pl

20071023

Well, where should I start. Inlook, my e-mail sending and receiving program needed an update. This time, I wanted to make a better configuration-system. The old solution looked like this: 

  open(CONFIGUREFILE, "<$config_file") || print "$0: can't open $config_file: $!\n";
  @configure_lines=<CONFIGUREFILE>;
  chomp($mail_real_name=substr($configure_lines[0], 10));
This is of course not good. It makes the configuration-file (~/.inlook/inlookrc) less flexible and hard to modify. Although I have an automatic setup for configuring inlook when running it for the first time, I felt that I needed to perform a little and very simple hack.

The new solution is quite simple, and now looks like this (in this example, we want to find the real name from the configuration-file): 

  open(CONFIGUREFILE, "<$config_file") || print "$0: can't open $config_file: $!\n";
  @configure_lines=<CONFIGUREFILE>;
  for ($i=0; $i<20; $i++) {
    if ($configure_lines[$i]=~/real_name/) {
      chomp($mail_real_name=substr($configure_lines[$i], 10));
      $check=1;
    } 
  }
  if (!($check)) {
    print "$0: configuration error: please check $config_file\n";
    &main();
  }
It does the job quite nice, and works perfectly. Now I have to change this for the whole code, which is going to take some time...

xzgv 0.8 issue

20070727

Running an x86_64 isn't that easy, after all - some programs just don't seem handle it. An example: I like xzgv (and yes - I'm aware that it's outdated), and used it all the time on my x86-laptop. Now, with x86_64 I got the following error messages while running make: 

stian@xasthur:~/programmer/xzgv-0.8$ make
cd src && make xzgv
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/stian/programmer/xzgv-0.8/src'
gcc -O2 -Wall -DINTERP_MMX -DBACKEND_IMLIB1 `gtk-config --cflags`   -c -o main.o 
main.c
main.c: In function `do_logo_invert':
main.c:4590: warning: operation on `ptr' may be undefined
/tmp/cc9apfZc.s: Assembler messages:
/tmp/cc9apfZc.s:13445: Error: suffix or operands invalid for `pop'
/tmp/cc9apfZc.s:13448: Error: suffix or operands invalid for `push'
/tmp/cc9apfZc.s:13451: Error: suffix or operands invalid for `pop'
make[1]: *** [main.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/stian/programmer/xzgv-0.8/src'
make: *** [xzgv] Error 2
It took some time, but eventually I realised both the cause and solution. In xzgv-0.8/config.mk we can see the following compiling options: 
CFLAGS=-O2 -Wall
After some thinking I found out the that I had to edit config.mk like this: 
CFLAGS=-O2 -Wall -march=x86-64 -mtune=x86-64
I also had to uncomment a line in config.mk in order to make this work (like I've done on the line below): 
# CFLAGS+=-DINTERP_MMX
Now, I've also created an x86_64 Slackware package which is available here.

Happy hacking!

Hacking Songs v0.3

20070719

Songs is a nifty program written by an enthusiastic individual which have written many hacks and programs. I use it with my noise-project and I really like it. It worked like a charm on my x86-laptop, but as I moved to x86_64 the program compiled fine, but exited with an error message. It would be sad if I couldn't use the program on my x86_64.

The error message I got was the following: 

stian@xasthur:~/programmer/songs-0.3$ ./songs 
Sorry, on your machine sizeof(int) < sizeof(void *)
the program can't handle it.
Now, I e-mailed the author, and he explained to me that I could try to uncomment some lines in main.c and see if that worked. That's exacly what I did, and as expected it worked fine.

The lines that causes the problem is the following: 

if (sizeof(int) < sizeof(void *)) {
  fprintf(stderr, "Sorry, on your machine sizeof(int) < sizeof(void *)\n");
  fprintf(stderr, "the program can't handle it.\n");
  return 1;
}
I decided to solve the problem with some sort of style, so I ran the following commands to create a patch. 
stian@xasthur:~/programmer/songs-0.3$ cat main.c > new-main.c
(Note that in new-main.c I have modified the five lines above.) 
stian@xasthur:~/programmer/songs-0.3$ diff -u main.c new-main.c > songs-0.3.x86_64.patch
You can download the patch from here, and copy it to the songs-0.3/-directory.

Use the following command to patch the program: 

stian@xasthur:~/programmer/songs-0.3$ patch -p0 < songs-0.3.x86_64.patch
stian@xasthur:~/programmer/songs-0.3$ make
That's it. The program _can_ handle it! :-)

20070727 Update: I have now created a Slackware package with Songs, it's available here.

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This page was last modified Tuesday, 10-Jun-2008 05:35:54 CEST
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