NAME

Prima::Utils - miscellaneous routines

DESCRIPTION

The module contains miscellaneous helper routines

API

alarm $TIMEOUT, $SUB, @PARAMS

Calls SUB with PARAMS after TIMEOUT milliseconds. Returns 0 on failure, and the active timer on success. The timer can be stopped to disarm the alarm.

beep [ FLAGS = mb::Error ]

Invokes the system-depended sound and/or visual bell, corresponding to one of the following constants:

mb::Error
mb::Warning
mb::Information
mb::Question

get_gui

Returns one of the gui::XXX constants that report the graphic user interface used in the system:

gui::Default
gui::Windows
gui::XLib
gui::GTK

get_os

Returns one of the apc::XXX constants that report the system platform. Currently, the list of the supported platforms is:

apc::Win32
apc::Unix

find_image PATH

Converts PATH from a perl module notation into a file path and searches for the file in the @INC paths set. If the file is found, its full filename is returned; otherwise undef is returned.

last_error

Returns last system error, if any

nearest_i NUMBERS

Performs floor($_ + .5) operation over NUMBERS which can be an array or an arrayref. Returns converted integers in either an array or an arrayref form, depending on the calling syntax.

nearest_d NUMBERS

Performs floor($_ * 1e15 + .5) / 1e15 operation over NUMBERS which can be an array or an arrayref. Returns converted NVs in either an array or an arrayref form, depending on the calling syntax. Used to protect against perl configurations that calculate sin, cos etc with only 15 significant digits in the mantissa. This function prevents the accumulation of error in these configurations.

path [ FILE ]

If called with no parameters, returns the path to a directory, usually ~/.prima, that can be used to store the user settings of a toolkit module or a program. If FILE is specified, appends it to the path and returns the full file name. In the latter case, the path is automatically created by File::Path::mkpath unless it already exists.

post $SUB, @PARAMS

Postpones a call to SUB with PARAMS until the next event loop tick.

query_drives_map [ FIRST_DRIVE = "A:" ]

Returns an anonymous array to drive letters used by the system. FIRST_DRIVE can be set to another value to start enumeration from. Win32 can probe removable drives there, so to increase the responsiveness of the function it might be reasonable to call it with FIRST_DRIVE set to C: .

If the system supports no drive letters, an empty array reference is returned ( unix ).

query_drive_type DRIVE

Returns one of the dt::XXX constants that describe the type of a drive, where DRIVE is a 1-character string. If there is no such drive, or the system supports no drive letters ( unix ), dt::None is returned.

dt::None
dt::Unknown
dt::Floppy
dt::HDD
dt::Network
dt::CDROM
dt::Memory

sleep SECONDS

Same as perl's native sleep (i.e. CORE::sleep) but with the event loop running. Note that the argument it takes is seconds, for the sake of compatibility, while the rest of the toolkit operates in milliseconds.

sound [ FREQUENCY = 2000, DURATION = 100 ]

Issues a tone of FREQUENCY in Hz with DURATION in milliseconds.

Obsoleted as modern systems stopped supporting APIs for primitive sound generation.

username

Returns the login name of the user. Sometimes is preferred to the perl-provided getlogin ( see "getlogin" in perlfunc ) .

xcolor COLOR

Accepts COLOR string in one of the three formats:

#rgb
#rrggbb
#rrrgggbbb

and returns a 24-bit RGB integer value

wait CONDITION [, TIMEOUT ]

Waits for a condition for max TIMEOUT milliseconds, or forever if TIMEOUT is undefined.

Returns undef on failure, 0 on TIMEOUT, 1 on a successful CONDITION.

CONDITION is either a scalar reference, or a sub to be polled, where their values are treated as 0 as a signal to continue the waiting, and 1 as a stop signal.

Unicode-aware filesystem functions

Since perl's win32 unicode support for files is unexistent, Prima has its own parallel set of functions mimicking native functions, ie open, chdir etc. This means that files with names that cannot be converted to ANSI (ie user-preferred) codepage are not visible in perl, but the functions below mitigate that problem.

The following fine points need to be understood before using these functions:

• Prima makes a distinction between whether scalars have their utf8 bit set or not throughout the whole toolkit. For example, text output in both unix and windows is different depending on the bit, treating non-utf8-bit text as locale-specific, and utf8-bit text as unicode. The same model is applied to file names.

• Perl implementation for native Win32 creates virtual environments for each thread and may keep more than one instance of the current directory, environment variables, etc. This means that under Win32, calling Prima::Utils::chdir will NOT automatically make CORE::chdir assume that value, even if the path is convertible to ANSI. Keep that in mind when mixing Prima and core functions. To add more confusion, under the unix, these two chdir calls are identical when the path is fully convertible.

• Under unix, reading entries from the environment or the file system is opportunistic: if a text string (file name, environment entry) is a valid utf8 string, then it is treated and reported as one. Mostly because the .UTF-8 locales are default and found everywhere. Note that Prima ignores $ENV{LANG} here. This is a bit problematic on Perls under 5.22 as these don't provide > means to check for the utf8 string validity, so every string will be slapped > a utf8 bit on here -- beware.

• Setting environment variables may or may not sync with %ENV , depending on how perl is built. Also, %ENV will warn when trying to set scalars with utf-8 bit there.

access PATH, MODE

Same as POSIX::access.

chdir DIR

Same as CORE::chdir but disregards the thread-local environment on Win32.

chmod PATH, MODE

Same as CORE::chmod

closedir, readdir, rewinddir, seekdir, telldir DIRHANDLE

Mimic homonymous perl functions

getcwd

Same as Cwd::getcwd

getdir PATH

Reads the content of the PATH directory and and returns array of string pairs where the first item is a file name and the second is a file type.

The file type is a string, one of the following:

"fifo" - named pipe
"chr"  - character special file
"dir"  - directory
"blk"  - block special file
"reg"  - regular file
"lnk"  - symbolic link
"sock" - socket
"wht"  - whiteout

This function was implemented for faster directory reading, to avoid successive calls of stat for every file.

Also, getdir is consistently inclined to treat filenames in utf8, disregarding both perl unicode settings and the locale.

getenv NAME

Reads directly from environment, possibly bypassing %ENV , and disregarding thread-local environment on Win32.

link OLDNAME, NEWNAME

Same as CORE::link.

local2sv TEXT

Converts 8-bit text into either 8-bit non-utf8-bit or unicode utf8-bit string. May return undef on memory allocation failure.

mkdir DIR, [ MODE = 0666 ]

Same as CORE::mkdir.

open_file PATH, FLAGS

Same as POSIX::open

open_dir PATH

Returns directory handle to be used on readdir, closedir, rewinddir, telldir, seekdir.

rename OLDNAME, NEWNAME

Same as CORE::rename

rmdir PATH

Same as CORE::rmdir

setenv NAME, VAL

Directly sets environment variable, possibly bypassing %ENV , depending on how perl is built. Also disregards the thread-local environment on Win32.

Note that effective synchronization between this call and %ENV is not always possible, since Win32 perl implementation simply does not allow that. One is advised to assign to %ENV manually, but only if both NAME and VAL don't have their utf8 bit set, otherwise perl will warn about wide characters.

stat PATH

Same as CORE::stat, except on systems that provide sub-second time resolution, in which case returns the atime/mtime/ctime entries as floats, the same as Time::HiRes::stat does.

sv2local TEXT, FAIL_IF_CANNOT = 1

Converts either 8-bit non-utf8-bit or unicode utf8-bit string into a local encoding. May return undef on memory allocation failure, or if TEXT contains unconvertible characters when FAIL_IF_CANNOT = 1

unlink PATH

Same as CORE::unlink.

utime ATIME, MTIME, PATH

Same as CORE::utime, except on systems that provide sub-second time resolution, in which case returns the atime/mtime/ctime entries as floats, the same as Time::HiRes::utime does.

AUTHOR

Dmitry Karasik, <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>.

SEE ALSO

Prima, Prima::sys::FS.