Serve a daily dose of information

APPETIZERS

Article from Issue 84/2007
Author(s):

When tackling something complex, such as a foreign language or Vim commands, digesting small bits of knowledge might be more effective than consuming a super-sized meal of information. This month’s Perl column gives you a method of serving up knowledge snippets by email.

No matter how good your command of English might be, there is always room for improvement. Or do you already know what “cynosure” or “exonym” means? Because I subscribe to “A.Word.A .Day” (AWAD), I receive a new word every day by email. Figure 1 shows how the service describes the daily word in simpler terms and provides examples of the word in action. A Tip a Day Because this approach is so effective, I thought of extending it to other fields. If there are daily tips for the Vim editor, why not have them for Perl? Or for the Java pitfall of the day? All it would take would be a script that stores the tips, and a cronjob that sends the tips to a list of subscribers every morning.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Perl: amtrack

    If you are a bargain hunter, you might enjoy this Perl script that monitors price developments at Amazon and alerts you if Amazon suddenly drops the prices on the products you have been watching.

    more »
  • Perl: YouTube Statistics

    Hobby YouTuber Mike Schilli is interested in whether his videos go viral. What better way to check skyrocketing viewer numbers than letting a Perl script analyze the daily trends and watch for unexpected upswings?

    more »
  • Perl: Slurping Kindle Highlights

    On the Amazon Kindle eBook reader, you can save personal clippings, or “highlights,” in a file; later, you can connect the Kindle to a USB port on a Linux machine and grab the data with a Perl script that stores it in a database.

    more »
  • Perl: Barcodes

    Barcodes efficiently speed us through supermarket checkout lines, but the technology is also useful for totally different applications. An inexpensive barcode scanner can help you organize your private library, CD, or DVD collection.

    more »
  • Perl: Archiving PDFs

    This month you’ll learn how to place articles in a private PDF archive and how to use a database to access those articles at a later time.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus

Visit Our Shop

Trial Subscription

Digital Subscription

Subscribe

Direct Download

Read full article as PDF:

Perl-Daily_Tip.pdf  (191.63 kB)

DevOps

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Events Hardware Linux Linux New Media Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source
njobs Europe
What:
Where:
Country:
Njobs Netherlands Njobs Deutschland Njobs United Kingdom Njobs Italia Njobs France Njobs Espana Njobs Poland
Njobs Austria Njobs Denmark Njobs Belgium Njobs Czech Republic Njobs Mexico Njobs India Njobs Colombia