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1:00 PM
@Josh I think so; the post stores the time it was converted to wiki so it can tell the difference
 
@Josh yes
 
Oh, wow, that's awesome.
I think I'm close to that point with an answer on English.SE is why I ask
 
-4
Q: Matching a RegEx between two div elements in HTML

Christian SciberrasI'm stuck with a regular expression. I currently have the following: (\<div class\="m".*?\<div class\="b") I need to capture anything between those two divs except other ending divs (lazy match, which is why I did .*?) Pattern: <div class="m" ... <div class="b" Content: <div c...

That's getting heated...
 
people keep commenting with "it's good but it doesn't cover this sentence". By the end of my edits I hope this answer will be the single place to got for all questions about the entire English language.
@ircmaxell oh, fun! I'll hop into the fray in a moment
 
I'm not going at it anymore
 
1:02 PM
I'm looking for a SE/SO site where people can help me name things (classes, methods). Anything like that exist? I realize it's subjective, but I've literally spent hours of my life trying to name things adequately.
 
I worked on Joomla as a core developer for a while. It's much more flexible than most people realize, including this guy
You just need to understand it.
 
@SteveJackson Erhmm... not really. You can talk to us here though :)
Code Review is in Private Beta, but 'Name these variables for me' doesn't sound like a good question
 
nope
 
@SteveJackson Programmers? Chat?
I think it's too subjective for Programmers even
 
I figured that was the case. Figured I'd ask before I went back to pounding my head on the table.
 
1:06 PM
@SteveJackson what are you debating on?
 
Staring at the large SF logo makes me see the 'black spot' optical illusion between the grid rectangles
 
You've been at this too long, @YiJiang :-)
 
@Josh, I've got a panel with some widgets. I want to cut it in half to reuse it for another panel. The widgets don't have much in common, essentially the new panel has half the functionality as the existing one. I can call it TopPanel and move on with my life, but I hate coming across a package of classes like that.
 
@YiJiang Yes, I'm kidding, I see it too :-)
@SteveJackson Hmmm. So you're looking for a name for the panel, or the widgets, or what?
 
1:10 PM
@Josh the panel.
 
Can you find any common relation between the widgets? Even something braod like TopOverviewPanel ?
 
@Josh, yep that's pretty much where I'm at. This one is a horrible example, glad I didn't actually put it out there as a SO question. Thanks.
 
No problem. I'm happy to help you brainstorm if I knew a little more about the widget thingadingdongs.
 
Oh god... I hate double escaping JavaScript regexs
 
ok @ircmaxell I finally finished my dissertation on proper comma usage and the avoidance of run-ons, let me see this mess you referred to...
Oh. It's gone!
just as @RebeccaChernoff appears the question I wanted to view disappears... suspicious
 
1:23 PM
1
A: Allow for Comment Reply to Usernames With Less Than Three Characters in First Word

balphaThis is now possible. We (sort of) still require a @reply to have at least three characters, and still stop matching on whitespace, but we now accept "nothing" as the third character, meaning "word boundary". So the comment Thanks @Jo, that helped! will cause a notification to the user "Jo...

Am I the only one to upvote this? :(
 
@Josh say what now?
 
lol
 
@YiJiang I didn't see it, +1 go @balpha!
@RebeccaChernoff Just razzing you, nothing unusual :-)
 
@Josh: What are your thoughts on these comments here? I'm curious to get some more perspective:
1
Q: PHP function param type best practises

OzzyHi all, sorry if the title is abit vague as i didnt know how else to put it. I am currently working on a framework and have come accros a snag... how should I handle incorrect parameter types when someone calls a function in the framework? Example: // Title is expected to be string, comment_num...

 
reading...
...editing...
 
1:26 PM
@Josh I was about to click on the 'edit' button when I say that, dammit :P
 
sorry, i couldn't stand it. Looks like you couldnt aswel
@ircmaxell for my company's PHP framework system, we started using trigger_error. We found that switching to using Exceptions and building our own logging system was far more powerful, easier to write, debug, and test.
so +1 for exceptions
 
yup
Plus, warnings are just too dam easy to ignore
So you wind up with a C style error checking rather than flow controlled error checking
that's not saying you shouldn't ever return error status variables, but not for exceptional circumstances (like passing the wrong thing to a method, or not being able to open a file)
 
Plus, warnings (may) show up to the user
 
I can't stand code like if (foo(bar) != SUCCESS) { handle error }
yup
 
We started with a global error handler which caught the warnings and printed an "Sorry, an error may have occurred when processing your request" message to the user, and generated an email to us. PAIN IN THE ASS
Now we throw exceptions if necessary and log to syslog
 
1:34 PM
yup. Absolute pita
 
now, the system is still not fully exception based since some of the core and the CMS still uses trigger_error, but, I want to do a from the ground up rewrite for v2.0
 
I wrote my own logging handler that logs to a database table a cr@p load of info (full backtrace including object dumps, full request headers, etc)
 
I just need to figure out the best way to prevent that to my boss... :-)
 
Well, you can at least install an error handler that converts a trigger_error into an exception for you
 
I think if I said I want to rewrite our whole system to make the code more "pretty" he's simultaneously strangle me and have a heart attack, LOL
 
1:36 PM
not as good as directly throwing an exception, but at least it'll solve your imediate problem
Well, refactor it piece by piece. Pick a class/section and rewrite that and get it working. Then go farther...
 
@ircmaxell we actually log to a module from where we could redirect to a database if need be
for now it just dumps to syslog
@ircmaxell yeah, that's what I've been doing, take a little extra time as need be
 
yeah, that's fair
@balpha They are not?
Ok, time to go blow some snow. tty all in a bit
 
Stay warm @ircmaxell!
 
I'll try
 
yawns G'morning, ugh
 
1:43 PM
Good morning @Tim
 
It is far too early based on when I went to bed, heh
 
Coffee! \o/
 
Hahah, soon, soon.
 
Yum thanks. Who said this bar doesn't serve drinks?
Funny, my question on "Is everyone in favor of the new 'everyone can edit' idea?" is by far my highest scoring question or answer on any of the SE sites, LOL
Looks like I should stick to Meta :-D
 
2:06 PM
Heheh :P
 
Oh boy this guy's in big trouble, LOL
-1
Q: how to change my directory name in linux?

balaI downloaded ndk and then uncompressed it. How to change to that directory in linux? This is my directory: /home/embdes/projects/android1/android-ndk-r5/ When I enter that into the terminal I get: android-ndk-r5: is a directory How do I use the android NDK in eclipse?

I edited it as best as I could, the original was a real gem, LOL
 
I was going to say, there's no way it was that comprehensible originally. :P
reads the original
>_>
 
> after uncompressed how to change my directory name in linux this is important?
> how to use android ndk in my eclipse right now tell me!
LOL
I think he doesn't know how to cd to a new directory. Which means he should not be developing on Linux, LOL
 
I think the end of your sentence needs to be moved three words to the left.
 
Sorry I do not understand what you mean @Tim
 
2:12 PM
*Which means he should not be developing <del>on Linux, LOL</del>"
 
HAHAHA
 
Sorry, brain...early... yawns :P
 
No I'm with you, my fault. I was thinking Which means he should not be developing LOL on Linux and I'm thinking it doesn't make sense to laugh mid-sentance
OK, time for real work now. :-)
 
Oh, hahah
 
Morning.
 
2:15 PM
'Ello @GeorgeStocker, @SLaks
 
@GeorgeStocker Good morning
 
What is the browser support situation for Array.map and Array.filter?
 
Hmm
 
Morning Josh
 
Wikipedia says none other than Firefox
 
2:27 PM
Chrome 10 has them
 
@TimStone Oh? Great!
 
Ah, even Chrome 8 (the main branch)
 
Opera doesn't have them :(
 
IE8 doesn't (surprise :P)
Nor IE9
 
Weird, Opera does have Array.map
 
2:33 PM
God forbid they make it easy for you to find out by providing a console or anything >_>
 
alert([2, 4, 4, 3].map); says yes, alert(Array.map) says no
alert(Array.prototype.map) says yes, hmmmm
 
MDC has implementations of both of those functions (not that they're complicated or anything, but) for browsers that don't have them, by the way.
 
 
1 hour later…
3:39 PM
Wow, an hour between messages, I think that's the longest I've ever seen this room be quiet
 
@CodingGorilla You'd be surprised
 
@Josh: I found a non-reflexive PHP equality test...
0
A: Are all PHP equality comparisons reflexive?

ircmaxellThe only type that I could see being different is something like: $foo = 1; $bar = 1; ($foo = $foo + $bar) == ($bar = $foo); To see why, look at it A -> ($foo = $foo + $bar) B -> ($bar = $foo); If A is run first, the result will be 2 and the result of B will be 2, so they are equal a...

 
3:54 PM
Which once more proves that assignment should never be an expression. </flamebait>
 
disagree($target = 'balpha');
 
@balpha: I won't argue with that
 
@MichaelMrozek SyntaxError: invalid syntax
 
But, $i == $i++ is not reflexive either...
 
$i++ is just a disguised assignment
 
3:57 PM
Helo
 
I know
WTF?
 
?
 
???
 
????
 
4:00 PM
@TimStone That's not a power of 2 ):
 
PHP is saying that $i == $i++ is false, and $i++ == $i is false as well...
wtf?
 
fails at life :(
 
?????
 
@ircmaxell I assume the results are undefined like in C
 
weird
the other one works
($a = $a + $b) == ($b = $a);
So I don't understand why the incremented one fails as well...
 
4:02 PM
function spaces (n) {
    return '                         '.substring(0, n);
}
This is... pretty darn stupid. Is there a better way?
 
is there a better way?
 
49
A: Repeat String - Javascript

Peter BaileyI'd put this function onto the String object directly. Instead of creating an array, filling it, and joining it with an empty char, just create an array of the proper length, and join it with your desired string. Same result, less process! String.prototype.repeat = function( num ) { return...

Define "better" :P
 
Oh yay! Much better
 
At the very least use a for loop. spaces(50), spaces(5000)
 
@RebeccaChernoff It's only for padding spaces, at most 10 chars
 
4:05 PM
Just saying. shrugs
 
Doesn't make it any less stupid though :P
 
Until the day you need 11.
 
goes off to add another space to the space store
 
function spaces(n) {return n == 0 ? '' : ' ' + spaces(n-1);}
 
And then you'll need a dozen
 
4:06 PM
while ( n > 10) {
    result += spaces(10);
    n -= 10;
}
 
AND THE NEXT DAY YOU'LL NEED A BAKER'S DOZEN
 
@RebeccaChernoff Then he'll go to a bakery, no biggy
Your string concatenations make me sad :P
 
@TimStone q:
 
spacesTable = {0: '', 1: ' ', 2: '  ', 3: '   ', ..., 50: '                                                  '};
function spaces(n) {return spacesTable[n];}
 
I'm a little disturbed that we both sort of went in the same direction on that one. I mean, I'm delirious from lack of proper sleep, but :P
 
4:08 PM
I'm curious, how performant is that recursive space function
 
@RebeccaChernoff Yeah, it's not very good, but it's the only one we've got
 
The recursive way is faster than concatenating in a loop. I'm surprised
 
LOL
Really?!?!?
Wow, JS must be quite broken...
 
Well, it's marginal, they're essentially the same. I'm surprised the recursive way isn't substantially slower though
 
4:14 PM
that's my surprise
 
Wait.. bacon isn't nutritious?
 
JS is probably smart enough to make that tail recursive, no?
 
@balpha Depends on the JITer
 
@balpha I assumed it wasn't, but apparently
The array imploding method from that SO answer is abysmal
 
4:15 PM
Well, it works well for small values of n
 
@MichaelMrozek Hmmm...
 
@MichaelMrozek Wow, it is..
Actually, in Chrome 10, the for loop is the fastest. >_>
...By a factor of almost 2.
 
On Firefox, the recursive method is rubbish - almost several 100x slower than the other two methods
 
They're within the margin of error I think on mine (Chrome 6)
 
Also, the recursive method is bad for when you want to make 20000 spaces, as it exceeds the stack size :P
 
4:17 PM
@TimStone Hahaha
 
@TimStone I don't worry about such trivialities
 
So it's a JIT optimization then
 
If you want 20K spaces, you're doing something wrong.
 
why not make non-breaking spaces?
&nbsp;
 
@RebeccaChernoff You were the one who was all "But what if you need one more!" :p
 
4:19 PM
@RebeccaChernoff: What if you're white-space encoding a secret message...?
 
...I just happen to need 19990 more.
 
We're doing a Whitespace code converter!
 
Huh, upgrading Chrome made the numbers increase. Of course, that also involved restarting Chrome.
 
I tried a giant switch block; it has a margin of error of 10%...
 
@RebeccaChernoff Eh... of course the version numbers increased when you upgrade it
 
4:21 PM
@YiJiang Hah ;)
 
smacks @YiJiang
Oh now that's interesting. Your favicon script works again
 
What about:

    function(n) {
        var result = "";
        var part = 0;
        while (n > 0) {
            part = n > 10 ? 10 : n;
            result += "          ".substring(0, part);
            n -= part;
        }
        return result;
    }
 
@RebeccaChernoff Obviously you should smack me more
 
Safari 5.0.3	4,091	9,233	7,099	1
 
Would've saved all that time we took trying to debug the thing
 
4:23 PM
Yeah, the next time Apple says things...they should probably...you know, not say them.
 
What's that last 1 there?
 
Oh, number of tests.
Copied by mistake, heh.
 
hehe, this works:
new Array(n+1).join(" ")
 
@balpha Yeah, that's the method mentioned in that SO question
 
hgrmph. Can't I ever find anything new?
 
4:25 PM
Chrome clearly dominates, heh.
WTF Opera?
Opera 11.00	58,928	15,354	116
 
The left is pre-upgrade, the right is post-upgrade.
 
So overall it is slower?
 
Oh wow, IE 9 dominated the Iterate function.
 
@TylerChacha Higher ops/sec is faster
@RebeccaChernoff's computer is way better than mine...
 
Hmm, should run this on my desktop too.
 
4:29 PM
Substring gets 9k on mine; that's the best by far
 
The results so far suggest that the worst thing you could do would be to listen to @MichaelMrozek :P
 
@TimStone I'm glad we finally have quantitative evidence
 
@RebeccaChernoff ...What the hell do you have in your machine? You beat me pretty badly :o
 
Oh wait, I'm reading mine wrong; mine gets 9m, not 9k. So either my machine is amazing or we're running substantially different code
 
4:32 PM
lol
 
0
Q: how to make Nice menu

Hi, how to make menu like this http://lilifi.ru (drupal6 site) ? some module? thx.

"migrated from MSO"?
 
@PopularDemand That happens more often than you'd think. We had six in one day a few weeks ago
 
Answer: How? Well, you start by figuring out how to do it, then you write the code. Then you debug the code. Then you enjoy your creation...
 
@TimStone i7 920 with 6gb ddr3
 
@MichaelMrozek The feature request for MSO --> elsewhere migrations is still declined.
 
4:34 PM
@PopularDemand Mods can migrate anywhere
 
@RebeccaChernoff ....Hm
 
@MichaelMrozek That's (somewhat) recent, too: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12039/…
 
What's your clock speed? I also have a 920, which is why I'm curious :P
 
sobs
 
@PopularDemand You should write LIES!! in a comment on Jeff's post.
 
4:39 PM
@TimStone Stock. 2.67GHz. I've got the setup to overclock, but when I built it I just wanted it up and running and have never done anything with that lol.
 
Huh, weird.
Oh, OK, I guess something went wrong the first time. :P
 
stares blankly from his 3 years old AMD dual core machine
 
Much better.
 
Restart Chrome?
 
I opened a new instance, yeah.
 
4:43 PM
So are you at stock or overclocking?
 
25
Q: Moderator nominees with records of vote fraud

PekkaIn the SO moderator nominations, two candidates withdrew their entries after it was revealed that they had been caught using sock puppets with many cross-votes in the past (with the number of fraudulent votes in the hundreds in one case, in the thousands in the other). Although I was personally ...

 
At stock too, but I think the mobo does some mild auto-overclocking.
 
Does it make me a bad person that I really want to know who got shunned for sockpuppet-voting?
 
yes
everything you do makes you a bad person @Shog9
 
that's... strangely comforting
goes back to kicking puppies
 
4:45 PM
@Shog9 For once, I have to agree with Chacha; my yardstick for "is this bad?" is "would Shog do/support this?"
4
 
is jealous of all the talk of fancy schemancy hardware that he will probably never get :(
 
@Shog9 I know who one of the users was, not sure about the second.
 
@PopularDemand Well, I would vote for @MichaelMrozek in the moderator election...
 
@PopularDemand We need to get Jeff to put that in the moderator tips
 
Ha, indeed, the user I was saying should be banned before is no longer on the nomination page. Maybe it was the same person after all.
 
4:50 PM
If you're thinking of the person I think I'm thinking of who wasn't the person I know was called out, then that might have been the second person.
 
@TimStone Well, that's that, then.
 
@TimStone Oh, I'm so confused!
 
y'all are just... brilliantly unhelpful
arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/01/… <-- I have some apologies to make to Flash...
 
Most assuredly!
 
waffles.
 
4:52 PM
Jan 3 at 21:10, by drachenstern
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox
 
Oddly enough, I have yet to see the FF4 betas crash
it's easily the most stable FF beta yet (for ME)
 
Apparently some other people aren't quite so lucky :P
 
yup
 
They must just not know how to treat a beta right.
 
well, that's probably true. It's what makes me a bad tester.
 
4:56 PM
0
Q: Make an application that adds two inputted numbers together

ircmaxellWell, here's another installment of our weekly code-bowling game. As a refresher: Code-Bowling is a challenge for writing the most obscure, unoptimized, horrific and bastardized code possible. Basically, the exact opposite of Code-Golf. The Challenge: Create a program using the langauge o...

 
I'm sorry...what?
 
1
Q: Feature Request: Cross-site list of the logged-in users posts on all sites

JohnI recently answered a question and found out the next day that it had vanished. I suspect it was migrated but I don't want to go randomly opening 10 accounts in the hope that I might find my answer. Feature Request: A cross-site list(maybe a page on SE.com?) that shows all of the logged-in user...

 
> a challenge for writing the most obscure, unoptimized, horrific and bastardized code possible
 
I'm tired, someone go find the dupe. :P
 
Gah, the internet just gave out for 5 min there
 
Well, I guess that's a discussion, not a feature request...but Jeff responded that it was a planned feature, so.
@YiJiang Unacceptable!
 
5:11 PM
Debugging why apache won't start for a sales person on a portable build that you made over the phone sucks.
(It was a PID file that was left over from an unclean shutdown that borked it)
 
still feeling sick
 
gruel. With BACON!
 
muhuhahahaha
 
5:31 PM
It freaks me out that often times scrolling with the mouse comes something in the general direction of the monitor make a small but noticeable sound
or changing tabs
or changing selections
or anything that causes a large change in the monitor's displayed image
 
The Ars article on Starcraft AI is brilliant
 
20 hours ago, by balpha
If I ever step down as the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company, I hope the media will find a better photo of me... http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-scmidt-out-as-google-ceo-2011-1
they must have searched for the worst photos they have of him
 
@balpha Sadly, not an uncommon practice.
I wonder what percent of SE users are even remotely active chat users.
 
@PopularDemand Look at the SE chat user ids
 
Well, according to TechCrunch (as seen on twitter)
 
5:44 PM
@PopularDemand All the major users on Gaming have been on chat a few times.
 
Those ids don't seem to be associated with anything, so anybody that has ever joined a chatroom will have a profile
Alternatively, look for the number of Talkative badges
 
Indeed, pages 120-235 of chat users (and possibly more) have never so much as posted a message.
 
about 18 pages of users on chat.SO have talked in the past week
so ~360
 
Hello
 
@YiJiang ~300 on meta and ~300 on SO, apparently.
 
5:50 PM
So I may have an ulcer or GI bleeding. Yay. :(
Driving to the pharm then home
 
You know @Benjol I could actually scrape data from chat site profiles, using YQL. That would still be 30 HTTP request from SO's end, but for us it would only be a single jsonp request to Yahoo
 
Thanks I needed that ;)
 
@YiJiang, make it so :)
 
This could, of course possibly totally kill chat given how many users there are and how many are accessing that page at a time
 
I've made feature request out of my question/your implementation:
0
Q: Proposed statistics page to accompany nominations

BenjolBuilding on my previous question, and more importantly on Yi's most excellent implementation, the feature request is simply that something like this should be implemented into SE for future elections.

@YiJiang, how many?
 
5:52 PM
So Dropbox is blocked here and Google Docs just flat doesn't work. What kind of stats does that moderator stat sheet thingy cover?
 
24
Q: Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics

BenjolI've made a feature request out of this I found myself doing lots of clicking through to profiles to try and compare nominees with (what I consider to be) useful/interesting information. I've cobbled together an Excel file with some metrics, may help you with your decision, and possible inspire...

The list in the question, answers and comments pretty much covers it, except for the chat stats that Yi just mentioned
 
@MichaelMyers Most of what you can find on the user's profile - active tags, activity, website, location etc.
Then, it loads up the user's Meta and SE profile and sticks that there too
 
tcrn.ch/hVqKJe /via @TechCrunch
 
The page list all 30 nominees, this is just one
(Have to remind myself, a single page hosted on Dropbox a site does not make)
 
5:55 PM
@YiJiang, can we get this for other users too? I'd like to see my profile like that.
 
@YiJiang, it would be quite cool to add an input box where you can enter any user id and get their details :)
 
@Moshe Well, if you want to... I'll be leaving that for tomorrow though, still have some features to work through
 
@YiJiang, way to go! Watch out, your startup may end up getting bought out by SO.inc :)
 
ok fair enough. I'm orthodox Jewish so I won't be online from in about 3-4 hours until the following evening. I guess if you are doing that, I don't mind waiting until next week.
 
Anyway, if I want to get my two young monsters to bed at a reasonable time, I suppose I better give them something to eat ;)
 
@Moshe, what is the appropriate salutation in such circumstances? How do you say 'have a good one' to a Jew who's about to go on Sabbath?
 

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