Java is portable?

Snippet for a java code:

public static MultipartRequest createMultipartRequest (HttpServletRequest req)
throws IOException
{
[SNIP]

// Create a temp directory for the attachments
Runtime.getRuntime().exec ("mkdir -p " + Constants.UPLOAD_PATH);

File check = new File (Constants.UPLOAD_PATH);

[SNIP]

}


What wrong with this code? The answer is, this code is not portable, i.e. doesn't work on Windows. Nothing wrong with the Java, the problem is the programmer itself. :D

I got this snippet from a discussion in The Daily WTF.

Mailmerge in openoffice 2

In my head, to do mailmerge we need template and datasource. Place the mail merge field in the template and point the field to appropriate datasource field/column.

I spent this christmas evening with trying a script to mailmerge using pyuno, found in the openoffice forum. What I want to do is, produce a single openoffice file after mailmerge from a datasource(a csv file). I manage to do it after modify the code. Hooray!

I had refer to the api, and read a java code snippet.

What annoying me is when export the merged file to pdf, extra unwanted blank pages will be produced for odd-numbered page. Let say I have 1 page template then want to mailmerge with 3 set of data. The result is 5 pages of pdf. The second and fourth page is fill with unwanted blank page. I had tried using openoffice 2 in my Windowx XP box and FreeBSD 6.0 box, both produce same result. Is it a feature/a bug? What I know, this really annoy me :(

Some of openoffice users also complaints about memory usage for mailmerge.

Actually, I had implemented mailmerge using another approach. Modify the openoffice xml file (to be specific, modify content.xml) using ooopy. Although my script able to do the mailmerge, it really painful to get it work. Manipulate openoffice xml using dom really make me headache. No benchmark for these two approaches, what I want is just to mailmerge. Duhh.

Merge arrays in php

The short answer is function array_merge from php manual.

Let say I have 2 arrays to merge:

$a1 = array('key1'=>'val1', '33'=>'dummy_value');
$a2 = array('choose_one'=>'');
$result = array_merge($a1, $a2);

What my expected result is:

array('key1'=>'val1', '33'=>'dummy_value', 'choose_one'=>'');

Right? Emm... my expectation is wrong, the actual result is, when print_r($result):

Array
(
    [key1] => val1
    [0] => dummy_value
    [choose_one] => 
)

What's wrong? After re-read the fine manual, the following line interest me:

Don't forget that numeric keys will be renumbered!

What? I put the key as '33' (with quotes), that should be string. Emmmm... no idea. I am suck or php suck?

Vim in windows

For some reasons, I used Windows XP this whole week. I can't live without vim when doing programming. One of common feature I used is 'visual block' by press 'Ctrl+v', and default configuration for gVim assume 'Ctrl+V' as paste. No idea+lazy to google solution for this, I use vim in cygwin.

From the setup.exe of cygwin, need to check for option vim (unchecked in default setting) to install vim. After set my .vimrc, I can used vim as usual in my Linux/FreeBSD box plus the command-line (bash in cygwin). A bit annoying when copying snippet code from web browser, firefox to the cygwin window. You need to click top-left cygwin window>Edit>Paste :(