PuTTY telnet strange output - lisp

I am serving a Lisp system from patrickconnelly.net on port 65000 for my college senior project. I tested remote access from the terminal (I run Slackware 14.0) and all was well. One of my group members successfully connected using PuTTY, but was unable to enter commands. Connecting in RAW mode allowed proper interaction with the server, but the output is displayed strangely. Every line seems to get tabbed over several times further than the one before it. I am clueless, and any help would be greatly appreciated.
By the way the output when connecting with PuTTY looks like
you must choose:
R: Steel Bank Common Lisp REPL
C: tasty treat
B: compliment two
etc
When it ought to be
you must choose:
R: Steel Bank Common Lisp REPL
C: tasty treat
B: compliment two
A: compliment one

Related

How to configure vscode to shaw values of stdlib objects in a human readable format

I am trying to debug a C++ via remote debugging with VSCODE running on my Windows, whereas the remote is Ubuntu server.
When I try to watch values of smart-pointers or of other stdlib containers (strings, vectors) instead of getting human-readable contents, I get pile of methods fields, parent classes with their fields an so on. For instance, an std::string value is represented as:
variable
|--------npos
|--------_M_dataplus
| |----------std::allocator<char> (base): ... (even more unreadable hierarchy)
| |----------_M_p ... (even more unreadable hierarchy)
| |----------_M_string_length
|
|---------<anonymous union> ... (even more unreadable hierarchy)
What I would like to get here was a string value "--name".
I tried to find any direction on VSCODE official site (e.g. how to configure debugger). Tried looking for a dedicated VSCODE extension, which perhaps does the parsing. Tried to search for an existing post that asks this - found a few similar questions with no answer (mostly old posts).

How do I decode xterm responses?

I'm building an application that uses pty.js to open up a pseudo terminal on my computer. I'm getting responses that look like:
]0;ec2-user#ip-172-31-62-237:~[?1034h[ec2-user#ip-172-31-62-237 ~]$ ls
]0;ec2-user#ip-172-31-62-237:~[ec2-user#ip-172-31-62-237 ~]$ pwd
/home/ec2-user
I'm assuming pty.js is sending back a specific encoding, but I'm not sure what the encoding is and how to decode it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Those aren't responses (the terminal would respond), but control sequences sent by an application (not the terminal). I see a few instances (OSC might print as ^[], and CSI as ^[[ if the escape character were shown as ^[):
]0;ec2-user#ip-172-31-62-237:~
looks like the control for setting the window title (from xterm although several programs support it),
OSC Ps ; Pt BEL
OSC Ps ; Pt ST
...
Ps = 0 -> Change Icon Name and Window Title to Pt.
and
[?1034h
looks like another sequence from xterm's repertoire (generally not supported by other programs):
CSI ? Pm h
DEC Private Mode Set (DECSET).
...
Ps = 1 0 3 4 -> Interpret "meta" key, sets eighth bit.
(enables the eightBitInput resource).
For the given example, encoding isn't a factor.
For capturing output from your application, the script program is useful. I use a small utility (unmap) to translate the resulting typescript files into readable form, but cat -v is often adequate for this purpose.
Further reading: XTerm Control Sequences

Programmable arguments in perl pipes

I'm gradually working my way up the perl learning curve (with thanks to contributors to this REALLY helpful site), but am struggling with how to approach this particular issue.
I'm building a perl utility which utilises three (c++) third party programmes. Normally these are run: A $file_list | B -args | C $file_out
where process A reads multiple files, process B modifies each individual file and process C collects all input files in the pipe and produces a single output file, with a null input file signifying the end of the input stream.
The input files are large(ish) at around 100Mb and around 10 in number. The processes are CPU intensive and the whole process need to be applied to thousands of groups of files each day, so the simple solution of reading and writing intermediate files to disk is simply too inefficient. In addition, the process above is only part of a processing sequence, where the input files are already in memory and the output file also needs to be in memory for further processing.
There are a number of solutions to this already well documented and I have a prototype version utilising IPC::Open3(). So far, so good. :)
However - when piping each file to process A through process B I need to modify the arguments in process B for each input file without interrupting the forward flow to process C. This is where I come unstuck and am looking for some suggestions.
As further background:
Running in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (currently within Virtual box)and perl v5.22.1
The programme will run on (and within) a single machine by one user (me !), i.e. no external network communication or multi user or public requirement - so simplicity of programming is preferred over strong security.
Since the process must run repeatedly without interruption, robust/reliable I/O handling is required.
I have access to the source code of each process, so that could be modified (although I'd prefer not to).
My apologies for the lack of "code to date", but I thought the question is more one of "How do I approach this?" rather than "How do I get my code to work?".
Any pointers or help would be very much appreciated.
You need a fourth program (call it D) that determines what the arguments to B should be and executes B with those arguments and with D's stdin and stdout connected to B's stdin and stdout. You can then replace B with D in your pipeline.
What language you use for D is up to you.
If you're looking to feed output from different programs into the pipes, I'd suggest what you want to look at is ... well, pipe.
This lets you set up a pipe - that works much like the ones you get from IPC::Open3 but have a bit more control over what you read/write into it.

Difference between machine language, binary code and a binary file

I'm studying programming and in many sources I see the concepts: "machine language", "binary code" and "binary file". The distinction between these three is unclear to me, because according to my understanding machine language means the raw language that a computer can understand i.e. sequences of 0s and 1s.
Now if machine language is a sequence of 0s and 1s and binary code is also a sequence of 0s and 1s then does machine language = binary code?
What about binary file? What really is a binary file? To me the word "binary file" means a file, which consists of binary code. So for example, if my file was:
010010101010010
010010100110100
010101100111010
010101010101011
010101010100101
010101010010111
Would this be a binary file? If I google binary file and see Wikipedia I see this example picture of binary file which confuses me (it's not in binary?....)
Where is my confusion happening? Am I mixing file encoding here or what? If I were to ask one to SHOW me what is machine language, binary code and binary file, what would they be? =) I guess the distinction is too abstract to me.
Thnx for any help! =)
UPDATE:
In Python for example, there is one phrase in a file I/O tutorial, which I don't understand: Opens a file for reading only in binary format. What does reading a file in binary format mean?
Machine code and binary are the same - a number system with base 2 - either a 1 or 0. But machine code can also be expressed in hex-format (hexadecimal) - a number system with base 16. The binary system and hex are very interrelated with each other, its easy to convert from binary to hex and convert back from hex to binary. And because hex is much more readable and useful than binary - it's often used and shown. For instance in the picture above in your question -uses hex-numbers!
Let say you have the binary sequence 1001111000001010 - it can easily be converted to hex by grouping in blocks - each block consisting of four bits.
1001 1110 0000 1010 => 9 14 0 10 which in hex becomes: 9E0A.
One can agree that 9E0A is much more readable than the binary - and hex is what you see in the image.
I'm honestly surprised to not see the information I was looking for, looking back though, I guess the title of this thread isn't fully appropriate to the question the OP was asking.
You guys all say "Machine Code is a bunch of numbers".
Sure, the "CODE" is a bunch of numbers, but what people are wondering (I'm guessing) is "what actually is happening physically?"
I'm quite a novice when it comes to programming, but I understand enough to feel confident in 'roughly' answering this question.
Machine code, to the actual circuitry, isn't numbers or values.
Machine code is a bunch of voltage gates that are either open or closed, and depending on what they're connected to, a certain light will flicker at a certain time etc.
I'm guessing that the "machine code" dictates the pathway and timing for specific electrical signals that will travel to reach their overall destination.
So for 010101, 3 voltage gates are closed (The 0's), 3 are open (The 1's)
I know I'm close to the right answer here, but I also know it's much more sophisticated - because I can imagine that which I don't know.
010101 would be easy instructions for a simple circuit, but what I can't begin to fathom is how a complex computer processes all of the information.
So I guess let's break it down?
x-Bit-processors tell how many bits the processor can process at once.
A bit is either 1 or 0, "On" or "Off", "Open" or "Closed"
so 32-bit processors process "10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010" - this many bits at once.
A processor is an "integrated circuit", which is like a compact circuit board, containing resistors/capacitors/transistors and some memory. I'm not sure if processors have resistors but I know you'll usually find a ton of them located around the actual processor on the circuit board
Anyways, a transistor is a switch so if it receives a 1, it sends current in one direction, or if it receives a 0, it'll send current in a different direction... (or something like that)
So I imagine that as machine code goes... the segment of code the processor receives changes the voltage channels in such a way that it sends a signal to another part of the computer (why do you think processors have so many pins?), probably another integrated circuit more specialized to a specific task.
That integrated circuit then receives a chunk of code, let's say 2 to 4 bits 01 or 1100 or something, which further defines where the final destination of the signal will end up, which might be straight back to the processor, or possibly to some output device.
Machine code is a very efficient way of taking a circuit and connecting it to a lightbulb, and then taking that lightbulb out of the circuit and switching the circuit over to a different lightbulb
Memory in a computer is highly necessary because otherwise to get your computer to do anything, you would need to type out everything (in machine code). Instead, all of the 1's and 0's are stored inside some storage device, either a spinning hard disk with a magnetic head pin that 'reads' 1's or 0's based on the charge of the disk, or a flash memory device that uses a series of transistors, where sending a voltage through elicits 1's and 0's (I'm not fully aware how flash memory works)
Fortunately, someone took the time to think up a different base number system for programming (hex), and a way to compile those numbers (translate them) back into binary. And then all software programs have branched out from there.
Each key on the keyboard creates a specific signal in binary that translates to
a bunch of switches being turned on or off using certain voltages, so that a current could be run through the specific individual pixels on your screen that create "1" or "0" or "F", or all the characters of this post.
So I wonder, how does a program 'program', or 'make' the computer 'do' something... Rather, how does a compiler compile a program of a code different from binary?
It's hard to think about now because I'm extremely tired (so I won't try) but also because EVERYTHING you do on a computer is because of some program.
There are actively running programs (processes) in task manager. These keep your computer screen looking the way you've become accustomed, and also allow for the screen to be manipulated as if to say the pictures on the screen were real-life objects. (They aren't, they're just pictures, even your mouse cursor)
(Ok I'm done. enough editing and elongating my thoughts, it's time for bed)
Also, what I don't really get is how 0's are 'read' by the computer.
It seems that a '0' must not be a 'lack of voltage', rather, it must be some other type of signal
Where perhaps something like 1 volt = 1, and 0.5 volts = 0. Some distinguishable difference between currents in a circuit that would still send a signal, but could be the difference between opening and closing a specific circuit.
If I'm close to right about any of this, serious props to the computer engineers of the world, the level of sophistication is mouthwatering. I hope to know everything about technology someday. For now I'm just trying to get through arduino.
Lastly... something I've wondered about... would it even be possible to program today's computers without the use of another computer?
Machine language is a low-level programming language that generally consists entirely of numbers. Because they are just numbers, they can be viewed in binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal, or any other way. Dave4723 gave a more thorough explanation in his answer.
Binary code isn't a very well-defined technical term, but it could mean any information represented by a sequence of 1s and 0s, or it could mean code in a machine language, or it could mean something else depending on context.
Technically, all files are stored in binary, we just don't usually look at the binary when we view a file. However, the term binary file is usually used to refer to any non-text file; e.g. an .exe, a .png, etc.
You have to understand how a computer works in its basic principles and this will clear things up for you... Therefore I recommend on reading into stuff like Neumann Architecture
Basically in a very simple computer you only have one memory like an array
which has instructions for your processor, the data and everything is a binary numbers.
Your program starts at a certain place in your memory and reads the first number...
so here comes the twist: these numbers can be instructions or data.
Your processor reads these numbers and interprets them as instructions
Example: the start address is 0
in 0 is a instruction like "read value from address 120 into the ALU (Math-Unit)
then it steps to address 1
"read value from address 121 into ALU"
then it steps to address 2
"subtract numbers in ALU"
then it steps to address 3
"if ALU-Value is smaller than zero go to address 10"
it is not smaller than zero so it steps to address 4
"go to address 20"
you see that this is a basic if(a < b)
You can write these instructions as numbers and they can be run by your processor but because nobody wants to do this work (that was what they did with punchcards in the 60s)
assembler was invented...
that looks like:
add 10 ,11, 20 // load var from address 10 and 11; run addition and store into address 20
In Conclusion:
Assembler (processor instructions) can be called binary because it's stored in plain numbers
But everything else can be a Binary file, too.
In reality if you have a simple .exe file it is both... If you have variables in there like a = 10 and b = 20, these values can be stored some where between if clauses and for loops... It depends on the compiler where it put these
But if you have a complex 3D-model it can be stored in a separate file with no executable code in it...
I hope it helps to clear things up a little.

"All programs are interpreted". How?

A computer scientist will correctly explain that all programs are
interpreted and that the only question is at what level. --perlfaq
How are all programs interpreted?
A Perl program is a text file read by the perl program which causes the perl program to follow a sequence of actions.
A Java program is a text file which has been converted into a series of byte codes which are then interpreted by the java program to follow a sequence of actions.
A C program is a text file which is converted via the C compiler into an assembly program which is converted into machine code by the assembler. The machine code is loaded into memory which causes the CPU to follow a sequence of actions.
The CPU is a jumble of transistors, resistors, and other electrical bits which is laid out by hardware engineers so that when electrical impulses are applied, it will follow a sequence of actions as governed by the laws of physics.
Physicists are currently working out what makes those rules and how they are interpreted.
Essentially, every computer program is interpreted by something else which converts it into something else which eventually gets translated into how the electrons in your local neighborhood fly around.
EDIT/ADDED: I know the above is a bit tongue-in-cheek, so let me add a slightly less goofy addition:
Interpreted languages are where you can go from a text file to something running on your computer in one simple step.
Compiled languages are where you have to take an extra step in the middle to convert the language text into machine- or byte-code.
The latter can easily be easily be converted into the former by a simple transformation:
Make a program called interpreted-c, which can take one or more C files and can run a program which doesn't take any arguments:
#!/bin/sh
MYEXEC=/tmp/myexec.$$
gcc -o $MYEXEC ${1+"$#"} && $MYEXEC
rm -f $MYEXEC
Now which definition does your C program fall into? Compare & contrast:
$ perl foo.pl
$ interpreted-c foo.c
Machine code is interpreted by the processor at runtime, given that the same machine code supplied to a processor of a certain arch (x86, PowerPC etc), should theoretically work the same regardless of the specific model's 'internal wiring'.
EDIT:
I forgot to mention that an arch may add new instructions for things like accessing new registers, in which case code written to use it won't work on older processors in the range. Much like when you try to use an old version of a library and then try to use capabilities only found in newer libraries.
Example: many Linux distros are released as 686 only, despite the fact it's in the 'x86 family'. This is due to the use of new instructions.
My first thought was too look inside the CPU — see below — but that's not right. The answer is much much simpler than that.
A high-level description of a CPU is:
1. execute the current op
2. grab the next op
3. goto 1
Compare it to Perl's interpreter:
while ((PL_op = op = op->op_ppaddr(aTHX))) {
}
(Yeah, that's the whole thing.)
There can be no doubt that the CPU is an interpreter.
It just goes to show how useless it is to classify something is interpreted or not.
Original answer:
Even at the CPU level, programs get rewritten into simpler instructions to allow the CPU to execute more them more quickly. This is done by changing the order in which they are executed and executing them in parallel. For example, Intel's Hyperthreading.
Even deeper, each instruction is considered a program of its own, one that routes electronic signals. See microcode.
The Levels of interpretions are really easy to explain:
2: Runtimelanguage (CLR, Java Runtime...) & Scriptlanguage (Python, Ruby...)
1: Assemblies
0: Binary Code
Edit: I changed the level of Scriptinglanguages to the same level of Runtimelanguages. Thank's for the hint. :-)
I can write a Game Boy interpreter that works similarly to how the Java Virtual Machine works, treating the z80 machine instructions as byte code. Assuming the original was written in C1, does that mean C suddenly became an interpreted language just because I used it like one?
From another angle, gcc can compile C into machine code for a number of different processors. There's no reason the target machine has to be the same as the machine you're compiling on. In fact, this is a common way to compile C code for AVRs and other microcontrollers.
As a matter of abstraction, the compiler's job is to translate flat text into a structure, then translate that structure into something that can be executed somewhere. Whatever is doing the execution may have its own levels of breaking out the structure before really executing it.
A lot of power becomes available once you start thinking along these lines.
A good book on this is Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Even if you only get through the first chapter (or half of the first chapter), I think you'll learn a lot.
1 I think most Game Boy stuff was hand coded ASM, but the principle remains.