Making Life Easier

Every developer worth their salt has little snippets of code that they use to make their life easier.

So today, I thought I’d share a little utility that I use all the time.

Readers, meet RL. RL, meet readers. RL (Run Line) allows you to run a single line of code to see what it does. Typically, I use this as a quick way to check out an OCONV express I haven’t used in a while or as a calc replacement if I don’t feel like tabbing out of the terminal. All you need to do is compile and catalog to enjoy its simpleness. RL supports 1 option, ‘-H’. This option allows you hide the compiler output if you wish.

To use RL, you can either enter the code as part of the command line arguments, or you can enter it as an input. Here is a screenshot of RL in action:

RL Utility

 

Disclaimer: I strongly recommend against implementing this on a production machine as it will allow arbitrary code execution. This code has only been tested on UniData 7.2.x. Feel free to use this code however you want. If you somehow turn this in to something profitable share the love and either buy me a beer or make a donation to an open source project.

Okay, so enough with the spiel. Here’s the code :
(Updated 2011-06-02 due to ‘<-1>’ being stripped)

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EQU TempDir TO "_PH_"
EQU TempProg TO "SNIPPET"

OPEN TempDir TO FH.TempDir ELSE STOP "ERROR: Unable to open {":TempDir:"}"

* Determine if we should hide compiler output
* Also determine the start of any command line 'code'

IF FIELD(@SENTENCE, " ", 2) = "-H" THEN
   HideFlag = @TRUE
   CodeStart = COL2() + 1
END ELSE
   CodeStart = COL1()
   IF CodeStart = 0 THEN
      CodeStart = LEN(@SENTENCE) + 1 ;* Force it to the end
   END ELSE
      CodeStart += 1 ;* Skip the Space
   END

   HideFlag = @FALSE
END

* Get the code from the command line arguments, or
* Get the code from stdin

IF CodeStart <= LEN(@SENTENCE) THEN
   Code = @SENTENCE[CodeStart, LEN(@SENTENCE) - CodeStart + 1]
   Code = TRIM(Code, " ", "B")
END ELSE
   PROMPT ''
   CRT "Enter Code: ":
   INPUT Code
END

* Compile, catalog and run the program
* We only catalog it so that @SENTENCE behaves as you would expect

WRITEU Code TO FH.TempDir, TempProg ON ERROR STOP "ERROR: Unable to write {":TempProg:"}"

Statement = "BASIC ":TempDir:" ":TempProg
Statement<-1> = "CATALOG ":TempDir:" ":TempProg:" FORCE"

IF HideFlag THEN
   EXECUTE Statement CAPTURING Output RETURNING Errors
END ELSE
   EXECUTE Statement
END

EXECUTE TempProg

* Clean up time

DecatStatement = "DELETE.CATALOG ":TempProg
EXECUTE DecatStatement CAPTURING Output RETURNING Errors

DELETE FH.TempDir, "_"TempProg
DELETE FH.TempDir, TempProg

STOP