• CodeMonkey (unregistered)

    First? har har

  • _ (unregistered)

    Meh. Where's today's snoofle's post?

  • Ivan (unregistered)

    TRWTF is "googling on AltaVista" phrase.

  • Rosuav (unregistered)

    So, basically an unoptimized but fully functional search index. That's actually rather not bad for something you stumble to. Sure, there are better ways of doing it, and this way will scale rather badly, and it's probably going to have more security holes than IE6, and it'll waste ridiculous amounts of resources... but it worked, right?

    :)

  • (cs) in reply to Ivan
    TRWTF is "googling on AltaVista" phrase.
    Indeed. The correct term is "Searched the Internet™ using Google® Web Search™ using the AltaVista® Search Engine™".
  • Jeff (unregistered)

    But really, who hasn't done this?

    Someone who can't code without a GUI IDE, that's who.

    It is called code reuse. Your system already has code to search a list of words and match wildcards. Why reinvent the wheel?

    Hell, who needs C? You could probably do this in a few lines of shell script.

    If you can't do it with native Unix command line tools, it's probably something you shouldn't be doing anyway.

  • Jack Foluney (unregistered)

    I wrote a system like this in highschool that made me cringe. It was done in GW basic for a manufacturing company my dad was the manager for. They used it for over 10 years which is scary!!

  • AnonymousMouse (unregistered)

    Never mind that, where's the null?

  • justsomedude (unregistered)

    Pipe command!

  • JS (unregistered) in reply to Rosuav
    Rosuav:
    So, basically an unoptimized but fully functional search index. That's actually rather not bad for something you stumble to. Sure, there are better ways of doing it, and this way will scale rather badly, and it's probably going to have more security holes than IE6, and it'll waste ridiculous amounts of resources... but it worked, right?

    :)

    Unoptimized or not depends on your filesystem.

    After "upgrading" this system to run on a modern filesystem with btree-indexed (or similiar) directories this would scale quite well at least for lookup performance. I speak from experience, althought that's not something I care to go into.

    Suffice to say, I've seen a machine invoking the OOM killer after starting ls...

  • steve (unregistered)

    i thought point-and-shoot was a camera term...

  • WC (unregistered)

    As my first major project, I wrote a Geocities clone, complete with automated email account creation. It was similarly shaky, but to this day I'm still proud that I managed such a thing with no professional experience.

    Today, it would look a lot different, take a lot longer, be a lot more stable, and I wouldn't be any more proud of it. :D

  • Chuck it in Me Dumpah (unregistered) in reply to _
    _:
    Meh. Where's today's snoofle's post?
    AKA, The Daily What the Fiction.
  • Dirty Ole Bastid (unregistered)

    How is this different from any other web dev?

  • (cs)
    The next year, I burned-out that very same C64 by trying use its sound chip for placing phone calls.
    I'm going to guess that the purpose was to send touch tones. I'm also guessing that you attached the audio output directly to the telephone network. I'll conclude by suggesting that at some point, an incoming call put 90VAC on the line...
  • Major DoucheBag (unregistered)

    Genius!

    I was just looking for a simple search solution!

  • Nag-Geoff (unregistered)

    You toffs have got nothing on me. I ATTEMPTED the first basic compiler in assembly because apple wouldn't make one that supported floating points. After several weeks of mangling about, Bill Gates came to our rescue and my project was abandoned.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Rosuav

    Yeah, seems fine to me too. Would be more efficient to use folder and file names or symbolic links rather than actually writing stuff into the file.

    Database search has it's failures. We're looking at using systems that work like this to get as we need to search on single letter words, etc

  • Frank (unregistered)

    I wrote a BASIC interpreter in C. It taught me quite a bit, mostly that I hate C.

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    The next year, I burned-out that very same C64 by trying use its sound chip for placing phone calls.
    I'm going to guess that the purpose was to send touch tones. I'm also guessing that you attached the audio output directly to the telephone network. I'll conclude by suggesting that at some point, an incoming call put 90VAC on the line...
    That reminds me of the day a colleague put a card into the wrong slot of a custom-backplane chassis. (Around 1992) The card was a 0-5V digital output, using an Intel 8255 PIO chip. The backplane slot he used was for some sort of analog input, and had a +24V supply rail on the pin connected to one of the poor 8255's outputs.

    The result was a snapping sound and a thin curl of smoke emerging from the top of the rack.

    Oh, and a wedge-shaped fragment blown out of the plastic chip package (40-pin wide DIP).

    The 8255 didn't work too well after that, needless to say.

  • (cs)
    OP:
    The algorithm I came up with was pretty simple. 
    * When an article is uploaded, split it into individual words.
* For each word, check if a file exists on disk with that name, and add it if not.
* Append the article’s file name to the word file name.

    As you might image, the search involved little more than an ls search_word and a few more file-opens to display the articles on the page.

    That's actually fairly sane... when compared to SSDS!
  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    operagost:
    The next year, I burned-out that very same C64 by trying use its sound chip for placing phone calls.
    I'm going to guess that the purpose was to send touch tones. I'm also guessing that you attached the audio output directly to the telephone network. I'll conclude by suggesting that at some point, an incoming call put 90VAC on the line...
    That reminds me of the day a colleague put a card into the wrong slot of a custom-backplane chassis. (Around 1992) The card was a 0-5V digital output, using an Intel 8255 PIO chip. The backplane slot he used was for some sort of analog input, and had a +24V supply rail on the pin connected to one of the poor 8255's outputs.

    The result was a snapping sound and a thin curl of smoke emerging from the top of the rack.

    Oh, and a wedge-shaped fragment blown out of the plastic chip package (40-pin wide DIP).

    The 8255 didn't work too well after that, needless to say.

    If you really like exploding chips, just put the mains straight across a 555 or 741. You'll hear a pop and a bang, followed by a sound as if of gentle rain; that's the sound of thousands of fragments of chip, none larger than a grain of sand, falling down from the air around you.
  • Yetti (unregistered) in reply to Ivan

    I can't actually read past this statement at the moment. I may be having an aneurysm.

  • L. (unregistered) in reply to Dirty Ole Bastid
    Dirty Ole Bastid:
    How is this different from any other web dev?

    well . for starters, if all webdevs knew how to use linux it'd be a major improvement

  • (cs)

    I've got a confession to make: I ______ MS Access ______

    I was going to write "I wrote MS Access applications" but then I couldn't. I just can define how dirty I felt, it was like losing my virginity because of being raped.

    And then I met PHP... Generation X sucks!!!

  • Dotan Cohen (unregistered) in reply to Ivan
    Ivan:
    TRWTF is "googling on AltaVista" phrase.

    Why? Googling is a verb, AltaVista is a website.

    I once heard someone say that she was googling in the refrigerator for ketchup but couldn't find any. I wanted to ask her if she photoshops her face before she goes out.

    captcha: jugis. The face-photoshop girl had two nice jugis

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    If you really like exploding chips, just put the mains straight across a 555 or 741. You'll hear a pop and a bang, followed by a sound as if of gentle rain; that's the sound of thousands of fragments of chip, none larger than a grain of sand, falling down from the air around you.
    Don't forget the experiment one of the British PC magazines did not long after the Pentium 4 came out. It was a fry-off, so to speak, between a couple of contemporary AMD processors, a P4 and a PIII. The test involved rigging a machine so the CPU cooler could be removed (heatsink and fan) while the machine was running.

    The PIII locked up, but was still usable after the power was removed and the cooler put back.

    The P4's thermal protection slowed it to a crawl, but it continued running while the cooler was off, and worked normally when the machine was repaired.

    The AMD processors died fairly thoroughly. They had a high-range thermometer of some sort, and measured one of them at 570 degrees C.

  • An Old Hacker (unregistered)

    That's not a confession, it's a brag. For a kid just out of high school, this is an amazing accomplishment. Robert Horvath, if you're not making some serious cash, quit & find someone who will pay you what you're worth.

  • Dotan Cohen (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Don't forget the experiment one of the British PC magazines did not long after the Pentium 4 came out. It was a fry-off, so to speak, between a couple of contemporary AMD processors, a P4 and a PIII. The test involved rigging a machine so the CPU cooler could be removed (heatsink and fan) while the machine was running.

    The PIII locked up, but was still usable after the power was removed and the cooler put back.

    The P4's thermal protection slowed it to a crawl, but it continued running while the cooler was off, and worked normally when the machine was repaired.

    The AMD processors died fairly thoroughly. They had a high-range thermometer of some sort, and measured one of them at 570 degrees C.

    I ran an AMD Duron up to 108 degrees C when I forgot to attach the fan wire. I could smell it, but no smoke and the thing worked fine for years after that. Intel? I fried a Duo Core at 72 degrees.

  • Jerry Maguire (unregistered)

    You had me at "Hello".

  • An Old Hacker (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    DaveK:
    If you really like exploding chips, just put the mains straight across a 555 or 741. You'll hear a pop and a bang, followed by a sound as if of gentle rain; that's the sound of thousands of fragments of chip, none larger than a grain of sand, falling down from the air around you.
    Don't forget the experiment one of the British PC magazines did not long after the Pentium 4 came out. It was a fry-off, so to speak, between a couple of contemporary AMD processors, a P4 and a PIII. The test involved rigging a machine so the CPU cooler could be removed (heatsink and fan) while the machine was running.

    The PIII locked up, but was still usable after the power was removed and the cooler put back.

    The P4's thermal protection slowed it to a crawl, but it continued running while the cooler was off, and worked normally when the machine was repaired.

    The AMD processors died fairly thoroughly. They had a high-range thermometer of some sort, and measured one of them at 570 degrees C.

    You're just pointing out that Intel & AMD had different design goals. Intel aggressively fought overclocking. AMD encouraged you to void your warrantee.

  • Charles Duffy (unregistered) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    But really, who hasn't done this?

    Someone who can't code without a GUI IDE, that's who.

    Or someone who known how ls works under the hood, and cares about the efficiency of the software they write. A search algorithm that's O(n) over the number of terms in the index is... let's say, not ideal. And that's before we get to the number of syscalls, the expense of fork/exec, etc.

  • Charles Duffy (unregistered) in reply to JS
    JS:
    Rosuav:
    So, basically an unoptimized but fully functional search index. That's actually rather not bad for something you stumble to. Sure, there are better ways of doing it, and this way will scale rather badly, and it's probably going to have more security holes than IE6, and it'll waste ridiculous amounts of resources... but it worked, right?

    :)

    Unoptimized or not depends on your filesystem.

    After "upgrading" this system to run on a modern filesystem with btree-indexed (or similiar) directories this would scale quite well at least for lookup performance.

    No, it wouldn't, because glob expansion is iterating over all files in the directory and applying fnmatch(); unlike the case where you know the name of a specific file you're looking for, the index doesn't come into play at all.

    If he'd gone straight to a file matching the word, rather than trying to support substrings of words, then you'd be right.

  • Jon E. (unregistered)

    Humility plug-in required.

  • (cs)

    I dread to ask what happens when I search for " ; rm -rf *"

  • Daniil S. (unregistered)

    Seems like the author has done one fine job for those days. The most classic is "spending a few hours googling on AltaVista" - it took a while trying to remember days before Google. Seriously, they have enslaved us!!! What did we have besides AltaVista and Yahoo back then? Excite?

  • A.H. (unregistered) in reply to Dotan Cohen

    I still remember the day my AMD Athlon XP died like "bang - high frequency noise - click". Bang: the heatsink spontaneously popping out of its place on its own High frequency noice: the poor thing screaming for help as the core burned out in a matter of a few seconds Click: CRT going to standby

    Good times.

  • Meta Ethical (unregistered)

    The inode structure may change over time. For the 6502A that we used to use in college, we had access to all the assembly PEEKs that we needed.

    One time we wrote a proto-CGI program titled LARP.BIN, but I forget the command that we used after CAT. I think it was BRUN that may have been the Crapple.

  • Daniel (unregistered)

    Who wants to bet that this solution was vulnerable to "watermelon | rm -rf / "

  • Unicorn #8157 (unregistered) in reply to An Old Hacker
    An Old Hacker:
    You're just pointing out that Intel & AMD had different design goals. Intel aggressively fought overclocking. AMD encouraged you to void your warrantee.
    I would claim the opposite. If you screw up when overclocking your Intel you can try again with a still-working processor. Screw up your AMD and you're out a CPU. Intel was just telling you that if you're going to overclock you have to make sure and give it enough heat dissipation. AMD didn't care if you shot yourself in the foot.
  • JC (unregistered) in reply to Daniil S.
    Daniil S.:
    What did we have besides AltaVista and Yahoo back then? Excite?

    Dogpile!!!! My dad continued to use it for more than a year after the whole of the rest of the world had swapped to Goog.

  • (cs) in reply to Charles Duffy
    Charles Duffy:
    Jeff:
    But really, who hasn't done this?

    Someone who can't code without a GUI IDE, that's who.

    Or someone who known how ls works under the hood, and cares about the efficiency of the software they write. A search algorithm that's O(n) over the number of terms in the index is... let's say, not ideal. And that's before we get to the number of syscalls, the expense of fork/exec, etc.

    Your words are true, but not everybody knew all about algorithm analysis and running times coming out of high school at the time.

  • Daniil S. (unregistered) in reply to JC
    JC:
    Daniil S.:
    What did we have besides AltaVista and Yahoo back then? Excite?

    Dogpile!!!! My dad continued to use it for more than a year after the whole of the rest of the world had swapped to Goog.

    Never heard of that till now. Thought you were referring to Lycos or just bsing.

  • Schmitter (unregistered) in reply to DemonWasp
    DemonWasp:
    I dread to ask what happens when I search for " ; rm -rf *"

    Not a problem, with the experience involved in the creation of the site there would no doubt be a diligent backup practice in place.

  • (cs) in reply to Daniil S.
    Daniil S.:
    What did we have besides AltaVista and Yahoo back then? Excite?

    There was Lycos and WebCrawler.

  • Decrepit Fart (unregistered) in reply to Daniil S.
    Daniil S.:
    Seems like the author has done one fine job for those days. The most classic is "spending a few hours googling on AltaVista" - it took a while trying to remember days before Google. Seriously, they have enslaved us!!! What did we have besides AltaVista and Yahoo back then? Excite?

    Kids today... Aliweb was frist and it is still out there.

  • Robb (unregistered)

    Why do I feel like 'grep' might have been useful here.

  • Decrepit Fart (unregistered) in reply to Decrepit Fart

    ...though it seems that the current awful site has nothing to do with the very Spartan search engine of yore

  • Ozz (unregistered) in reply to steve
    steve:
    i thought point-and-shoot was a camera term...
    I thought it was a reference to Smith & Wesson.
  • fritters (unregistered) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    Who wants to bet that this solution was vulnerable to "watermelon | rm -rf / "

    Ah yes, the dreaded watermelon attack.

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