perl programmers please flood me with mail
Roland Walker
Hello. I am writing an article about perl. I would like to hear from perl
programmers around the world who have used perl for diverse purposes.
I'm not looking for many variants of 'system maintenance' on different
platforms; rather, what I'm after are the many different ends to which
a flexible language like perl can be bent. For instance, I use perl in
my work to do DNA and amino acid sequence analysis and to process
scientific documents.
These are very obvious uses for perl. I'd like to hear some of the more
creative uses out there.
Please reply by mail to this post. Make sure the word 'perl' is in your
subject line so that the mail filter will recognize and sort your responses.
Thanks,
Roland Walker
rwa...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
--
Roland Walker
rwa...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
Johns Hopkins Dept of Biology
Jonathan Scott Duff
:
: Hello. I am writing an article about perl. I would like to hear from perl
: programmers around the world who have used perl for diverse purposes.
:
: I'm not looking for many variants of 'system maintenance' on different
: platforms; rather, what I'm after are the many different ends to which
: a flexible language like perl can be bent. For instance, I use perl in
: my work to do DNA and amino acid sequence analysis and to process
: scientific documents.
:
: These are very obvious uses for perl. I'd like to hear some of the more
: creative uses out there.
He who calls DNA sequence analysis an "obvious" use for perl has a keener
sight than I. ;-)
-Scott
--
Jonathan Scott Duff Email: du...@cbi.tamucc.edu
Programmer / Analyst URL: http://www.cbi.tamucc.edu/~duff/
Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science
6300 Ocean Drive, Corpus Christi TX 78412
BIU
>rwa...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Roland Walker) writes:
>: I use perl in
>: my work to do DNA and amino acid sequence analysis and to process
>: scientific documents.
>:
>: These are very obvious uses for perl. I'd like to hear some of the more
>: creative uses out there.
>:
>
>He who calls DNA sequence analysis an "obvious" use for perl has a keener
>sight than I. ;-)
You had to be there :-) . I'm in the field (genome mapping
and protein structures) and also find that for some tasks
it is indeed "obvious" to use Perl. Rapid scripting and
pattern-matching, as well as easy control over starting &
finishing other processes and over their input and output
(there's lots of already existing stuff that you need to
integrate - not dissimilar to sys admin work).
--
Jack j...@biu.icnet.uk
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Maslow
Michael T.Y. McNamara
rwa...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Roland Walker) writes:
:
: Hello. I am writing an article about perl. I would like to hear from perl
: programmers around the world who have used perl for diverse purposes.
:
: I'm not looking for many variants of 'system maintenance' on different
: platforms; rather, what I'm after are the many different ends to which
: a flexible language like perl can be bent. For instance, I use perl in
: my work to do DNA and amino acid sequence analysis and to process
: scientific documents.
:
: These are very obvious uses for perl. I'd like to hear some of the more
: creative uses out there.
:
Perl is also obvious as a regression engine driver for folks like
myself who are developing compilers (in my case for Verilog-HDL, which
is what folks are using to make computers that are obviating the need
for the computers based on DNA that you are studying :-)
Is there anyone else out there using perl to help develop electronic
hardware?
We could always use more perl+verilog literate people...
--
,------. Michael McNamara Send mail to in...@chronologic.com for INFO
|CHRONO|LOGIC SIMULATION to sup...@chronologic.com for SUPPORT
`------' A VIEWlogic Company For information, call 1-800-VERILOG
J.J. Merelo Guervos
As you all know, the big trouble about multiple choice exams is that they are
eaaaaaasy to cheat, even more so for computer science students. Just convert
the sequence of answers to binary code, and spit them in a unaudible voice
stop.
That's why I have made a random-multiple choice exam generator. First of all,
I write all the possible questions and answers to the exam in a text file.
End of question sentence is marked by :, end-of-answer by ., and correct answer
by !. I call one program called extract.pl, that takes that file and converts it
in a set of files, one for each question and possible answer. Questions are
named with a letter, answer with that letter and a number, correct answer is
<letterquestion>.C.
Then I call another program, shuffle.pl, using as arguments the number of exams
I want, and the number of questions I want; for instance, from 35 possible
questions, I want 100 exams with 25 answers. Shuffle.pl generates that many LaTeX
files, including a prologue (with name of exam, and so and so) and epilogue
(with, for instance, non-multiple choice questions), a grid with an square for
each possible answer, and even your Univ shield, if you like. Some shell commands
latex-and-print the exams (although it takes a while, depending on the printer).
The questions and answers are in random order, so that even if two exams have
the same questions, they will be in different place, and even so, the answers
will be also randomly ordered. That makes impossible to use the above mentioned
method to cheat, it is as difficult (or as simple) to cheat as in any other
exam, where you have to ask the full content of the question, and get an answer
with part of the contents of the answer.
In order to correct, I have another program, correct.pl, that asks the sequence
number of the exam, the name or part of the name of the student (depending on
being the first exam or not), the sequence of answers, and generates a Latex
report with the number of correct questions, the sequence of answers, the note,
and even takes into account if you want to use negative points for wrong
questions.
I have been using it this year, having reduced one order of magnitude the time
needed to correct exams, and in 2 orders the time spent reviewing exams. I only
wish I had a full-page form-feed scanner, write a small neural network program
in C, and use character-recognition to correct the exam. The only work I would
need would be to think about the questions.
Hope this is the kind of application you were looking for, and that it does not
come too late...
JJ
--
JJ Merelo
Grupo Geneura ---- Univ. Granada
Kartik Subbarao
J.J. Merelo Guervos <jme...@kal-el.ugr.es> wrote:
>I have used PERL as a test generator and correction tool.
>
>As you all know, the big trouble about multiple choice exams is that they are
>eaaaaaasy to cheat, even more so for computer science students. Just convert
>the sequence of answers to binary code, and spit them in a unaudible voice
>stop.
I read this five times, and still have no clue what you mean. Could you
rephrase this?
-Kartik
J.J. Merelo Guervos
Sorry, man...
What I meant to say is that it is usually very easy to cheat in multiple choice
exams; and it is even more so for computer science students. You take all the
correct answers, which are numbers from 1 to 4, from a to d or whatever. Then
convert them to binary code... each answer would take 2 bits. In a 4-answer
exam, the answer code would look like
00 01 00 11
, for instance. Then convert this to hexadecimal code.
1 3
and then, whispering in a low voice, and doing it as fast as possible, say
one three hexa
(or suchlike). All of a sudden, in a range of +- 3 seats around you, everybody
knows the answer (hexa is needed just in case you have not agreed on the base
in advance).
That's what I intended to say. Guess it is a more or less common cheating
technique in computer science students.
ObPerl: Hope you have not had trouble with the rest of the description of the
PERL programs I use to generate and correct random multiple choice exams.
Kartik Subbarao
J.J. Merelo Guervos <jme...@kal-el.ugr.es> wrote:
>In article <30q3pi$o...@tadpole.fc.hp.com>, subb...@concorde.fc.hp.com (Kartik Subbarao) writes:
>> In article <30oq9s$o...@obelix.cica.es>,
>> J.J. Merelo Guervos <jme...@kal-el.ugr.es> wrote:
>> >I have used PERL as a test generator and correction tool.
>> >
>> >As you all know, the big trouble about multiple choice exams is that they are
>> >eaaaaaasy to cheat, even more so for computer science students. Just convert
>> >the sequence of answers to binary code, and spit them in a unaudible voice
>> >stop.
>>
>> I read this five times, and still have no clue what you mean. Could you
>> rephrase this?
>>
>
>Sorry, man...
[Much better explanation deleted]
>That's what I intended to say. Guess it is a more or less common cheating
>technique in computer science students.
Heh. I've never heard about it. Then again, I never needed to cheat anyway :-)
>ObPerl: Hope you have not had trouble with the rest of the description of the
>PERL programs I use to generate and correct random multiple choice exams.
Yeah, got the rest. Thanks for the explanation.
--
Kartik Subbarao, Workstation Systems Division, Hewlett-Packard
Internet: <subb...@fc.hp.com>, Phone: (303) 229-3897, Fax: (303) 229-6858
thi
> [high-speed compression algorithm deleted]
>
> That's what I intended to say. Guess it is a more or less common
> cheating technique in computer science students.
hehe, this sounds like as much work as doing the exam directly!
definitely would not have worked in my classes... students too laid
back. ;-)
thi
--
--------------------------------+-------------------------------+---------
\__ __ __ thien-thi nguyen | live to play learn to live | no infor
\ -_ \ t...@netcom.com | play to learn | mational
\__ ~-___ +1 408 733 5930 | live to play learn to live | content!
--------------------------------+-------------------------------+---------