I have searched for a setting within the mvbasic extension within VSCode but I may have hit a dead end. I am new to using VSCode with the rocket mvbasic extension and still in the learning process, so please bear with me.
Our development for the most part has always been directly on the server using the editor within it to code and develop on a Unix/Aix platform with Unidata. Some of our code has array assignments with CHAR(253)/CHAR(254) characters within them. See the link to the image that shows how its done. Now I didn't do this code, the original software developer did this many many years ago and we just aren't going to go and change it all.
How code looks on actual server
The issue is when pulling the code to edit in VSCode, the extension is changing it, and I uploaded it back and didn't pay attention and it was implemented in our production incorrectly, which created a few bugs.
ALIST="H�V�P�R�M�D"
How code looks in VSCode
How code looks after uploaded back to server from VSCode
Easy to fix, no biggie, but now to my question.
Does anyone have this issue, or has a direction to point me into that maybe I need to create a setting to keep the characters in the correct ASCII format so that this doesn't happen again by mistake?
VSCode defaults to the sane choice for character encoding in 2022: utf-8, but sometimes you have to deal with legacy stuff.
https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/codebasics#_file-encoding-support
If you click on the UTF-8 in the bottom right corner you can choose "Reopen with Encoding":
After that, you can select a different encoding. I chose DOS (CP437) at a guess and literal MV characters are displayed as superscript 2 (²), and for me I can save to the server and confirm those characters remain as #VM after a round trip (though for my terminal emulator they appear as } which is useful).
You can edit preferences and set "files.encoding": "cp437". One other thing that can be helpful if your programs don't have a standard extension (like .bas) as most don't is to set the default mode to basic so most of what you're editing will identify as MVbasic, and you can do a quick CTRL-K M to switch to any other modes if you're just pasting in something else like SQL.
Some useful links - the Rocket forums are helpful and the folks there are always super nice
https://community.rocketsoftware.com/forums/multivalue?CommunityKey=521bce2e-71d5-4d32-b560-dfa95e950eb5
The MV Extensions Community extension is a good group and always has been helpful when I've had issues. I've made some small contributions - they're very open. I prefer this extension, but honestly haven't done a deep comparison.
https://github.com/mvextensions
I would like to access the history of what have been typed in the source panel in RStudio.
I'm interested in the way we learn and type code. Three things I would like to analyse are: i) the way a single person type code, ii) how different persons type code, iii) the way a beginner improve typing.
Grabbing the history of commands is quite satisfying as first attempt in this way but I would like to reach a finer granularity and thus access the successive changes, within a single line in a way.
So, to be clear, I'm neither looking for the history of commands or for a diff between different versions of and .R file.
What I would like to access is really the successive alterations to the source panel that are visible when you recursively press Ctrl+Z. I do not know if there is a more accurate word for what I describe, but again what I'm interested in is how bits of code are added/moved/deleted/corrected/improved in the source panel but not necessary passed to the Console and thus absent from the history of command.
This must be somewhere/somehow saved by RStudio as it is accessible by the later. This may be saved in a quite hidden/private/memory/process/... way and I have a very vague idea of how a GUI works. I do not know it if would be easily accessible, then programmaticaly analyzed, typically if we could save a file from it. Timestamps would be the cherry on top but I would be happy without.
Do you have idea how to access this history?
RStudio's source panel is essentially a view to an Ace Editor. As such you'd need to access the editor session's editSession and use getDocument or getWordRange along with the undo of the editSession's undoManager instance.
I don't think you'll be doing that from within RStudio without hacking on the RStudio code unless the RStudio Addin api is made to pass-thru editor events in the future.
It might be easier to write a session recorder as changes are made rather than try to mess with the undo history. I imagine you could write an Addin that calls a javascript to communicate over the existing RStudio port using the Ace Editor's events (ie. onChange).
As #GegznaV said, RStudio saves code history to a ".RHistory" file. It's in the "Documents" folder on my computer. It's probably the same folder if you're using Windows. If you do not know the location, you can find the file by searching.
It also allows saving RStudio history to a file manually. There is a "Save" button in the History panel. So you can also get a timestamp. You can ask different users to save their code history after they have finished writing code. It may be indirectly useful to your research.
Anyone know how to set Notepad++ as default text editor for SAS, Stata and R?
I'm having the hardest time finding anything online (particularly for SAS). Looking for ability to run code from Notepad++ as well as setup color coding.
Thanks.
Why not just go the GUI route: right click, e.g., any foo.R file and select "Open with...", then pick Np++ and click the "always open this file type.." button. Rinse, lather, repeat.
BTW, for R, if you don't already have it, get "NppToR" , a little app which lets you execute code directly from the Npp window.
On windows you can either:
manually edit the keys for the file type to set the value of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FILE_TYPE\shell\edit\command where FILE_TYPE is the appropriate one for each of the files extensions you wish to change this is quite hard work or
you can use a program that does it for you such as the free Default Programs Editor
In either case the first thing to do is to back up the registry.
I would seriously suggest looking into using one of the many, some free IDEs as they will automatically include the run from edit environment, syntax highlighting, code completion and, in many cases, debugging as well.
Notepad++ is my favorite editor and I was in the same shoes as you are now.
I am assuming that you are in Windows (Notepad ++ doesn't exist in Mac, saddest thing for me)
Please follow the steps mentioned in the below webpage and do as the author says.
http://hafniumcity.com/notepad_color.php
Now for in-line editing , it may be not be the best choice for SAS. Although I haven't tried it much so not a good person to comment on it.
I have been using UNIX for years and the dcop command only recently came to my attention. What is its primary purpose and is using it in any process a sign of poor design?
is using it in any process a sign of poor design?
Probably not, as long as you're using DCOP to perform some task that would ordinarily be done with a mouse click or hotkey. It's certainly way better design than trying to control the mouse to do what you want to do with the program!
But if you use DCOP to do something really simple that could be done directly with a shell command or a few lines of C code, without invoking a KDE application at all, it's probably better to just do it the direct way. (e.g. don't use DCOP to tell Konqueror to remove a directory tree, just run rm -rf)
I suspect it mainly exists because everything in UNIX ought to be accessible from the command line.
The Wikipedia article on dcop is worth a read.
It's great for any scripts to use to control processes, there's also good information on controlling Amarok via dcop.
Do you know any resources that teach to good habits of working in UNIX command line?
EDIT: I don't mean general books about shell or man pages. I mean the things that you can only see watching professionals working with command line. For example when changing frequently between two directories they use "pushd" command, when repeating a command they use "history". I can read about these commands but I want to make it a habit to use them effectively.
I am speaking out of my own experience so it may not apply to you;
The best way to be efficient is actually using it on a daily basis, instead of using graphical tools even if they make look things easy. You will then become aware of most common tasks you care about, and instead of trying to grok it at once, you get a fairly good starting point to start learning. Man pages are the first thing to look at, but there will be non-obvious tricks which you need to search anyway. Knowing what you exactly want, infinitely increases probability of finding it.
For example, you can find how to search all mp3 files easier in man page of "find" than how to deal with files in general (where to start?).
Some common bash command line actions, not in order:
Command line editing: you'll want to be good with emacs or vi and apply that to editing your commands.
Completion: use TAB to expand file names and paths.
note: There is a huge set of file, command, and history completion functions, and it is configurable. Big topic.
"cd -" : go back to the last directory you were in
~ = home directory (or ~user for users home dir)
"ESC ." : expands to the final arg from the previous command
"!string" : execute the last command starting with string
learn find, grep, sed, piping "|" and redirection ">". You'll often combine these to do useful things.
Loops from the shell prompt, e.g. "for" loop - to do repetitive actions
Learn your regular expressions! Often used for matching files.
example: ls x[0-5]*.{zip,tar} = list files starting with x, followed by a number 0 through 5, followed by any string ending in .zip or .tar
If possible ask others for their favorite tricks, read the manual, and practice.
For the more advanced stuff This seems to be fairly comprehensive
this is a great resource: "Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition" (http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz)
stackoverflow.com esp. the bash tag ;-)
(and of course the bash man page)
If you want things that you can "only see watching professionals working with command line," then you've answered your own question: Watch professionals working with the command line. I don't personally find that very useful unless the other person is doing the same thing multiple times; it's hard to pick something up after just one session because it's hard to watch the screen and the keyboard at the same time.
I think the key is to not try to become an expert right away. Just use the command line frequently, and be aware that you might not be using it as well as you could, but don't let that discourage you from using it anyway.
Browse through the man page of your shell, and through lists of tips, not with the goal of memorizing everything in them, but just to pick out a couple of things to try out. Skim through until something catches your eye and makes you think, "Gee, that sounds useful." Then try it out. Not everything is going to be useful immediately; you might have to wait a while before you encounter a situation where you can try something out. Maybe you could write down some things on Post-It notes by your desk to remind you that certain feats are possible, so when you encounter a situation where a more obscure feature could be handy, you'll be more likely to remember to try it.
Frankly, it's impossible to learn this stuff in a vacuum. You need to have problems to solve.
While it certainly helps to have familiarity with the tools available (of which there are a myriad), "learning" it requires applying it. And applying it requires "real" problems to solve.
For example, the skillset of a System Admin may be different from someone who works with databases because their roles are different.
I use them for data processing, using mostly one off files. /tmp/x.sh and /tmp/x.x are worn bare in the directory folder.
My hammers tend to lean towards: ls, find, sort, sed, vi, awk, grep, and comm. Combined with simple shell scripting like: for i in cat /tmp/list; do .. done
But I do a lot of ETL work, and very few script files, which is why my shell scripting skills are so weak.
I do rely on one script, however:
#!/bin/sh
# latest -- show latest files
ls -lt $# | head
As 95% of the time the files I'm working on are in the top 10 latest files. And "latest *.txt" works a peach.
So, bottom line, you need problems to solve. You need to learn the 'man' command, man -k is nice to find things. You also need to leverage the "See Also" at the bottom of most man pages. That's a treasure trove of "I didn't know you could do that".
Then, just start solving problems. Start figuring out "what would be nice to have" and then see if it exists (it very well may). If not, awk, perl, or python can make those "nice to haves" out of thin air.
Join a LUG. That is where I learned most things early on. Ask the organizers to do a "Bash Tips And Tricks Night".
Deft shell users love to show off.
apropos is a really good tool for this sort of thing. Whenever you find yourself unsure of the best way to do something, or wishing you weren't repeating yourself, just use apropos with a keyword or two to find other commands that can help. In distros like debian, you can also install web-based help tools that search all of the manuals available on the system: texinfo, man pages, html, and pdf etc.
Aside from that, yep, read your shell's manual right through at least once --- preferably, go back to repeatedly it as you learn more, reach limits and want to be more efficient.
The join a LUG idea is also good; you'll definitely learn from others' demos.