While developing an upcoming perl monks utility release (xml_pimp) I went through a gamut ideas, in the midst of which, i thought about generating a temporary file.

I was messing with bunch of new things at the moment, some of which include the printf functions, regexes, inline pod ... ;)

None the less, here is what came out of it. Read it, test it, use it if you like.

++++What I went through to figure out how the generate the filename comes first, and my test script (that actually created and deleted files), comes after that .

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

=head1 I MISUNDERSTOOD MY INPUT AND FUNCTION

 Apparently sprintf does not provide maximum length for number types,
 but only for strings.  So in effect i was getting ints wih 8 or 9
 digits before the . and the min length was 8, but you can't specify
 max length.
 
 Live and learn, and then make an ass out of yourself (almost) ;-^)~
 
 I ended up making sure my input was an integer, and then treating
 it as a string with max and min length specified.
 Basically i feed it to sprintf twice

=cut

=head1 SPRINTF NOT PADDING CORRECTLY (original question)

 print sprintf(".crazy.%010u.temp",rand(time)),"\n";
 print sprintf(".crazy.%08.8s.temp",rand(time)),"\n";

 Its' fine if i use string, but it's supposed to be minimum length for
+ int
 but it doesn't pad with d (signed int), or with u (unsigned int).
 unless it's the length is 9 or greater.

 Is this flaw, or what?
 If i use 8, some numbers don't get padded.
 If i use 9 or greater,  they do.
 
 I don't think this has to do with my specific version of perl,
 which is ActiveState 5.6(build 623) btw.

 Why, cause perldoc:pelrfunc says:

 Perl does its own sprintf formatting--it emulates the C function spri
+ntf,
 but it doesn't use it (except for floating-point numbers, and even th
+en
 only the standard modifiers are allowed). As a result, any non-standa
+rd
 extensions in your local sprintf are not available from Perl.

 And since i'm not trying to represent a floating point number (i want
+ int),
 it should make no difference(not that it would anyway).
 
 Also, I do not wish to use %08s (for string), because sometimes a . s
+neaks
 in, which is because rand(time) outputs a positive float that looks l
+ike

 BTW - rand(time) yields results like:
       598318636.889648
       52034455.75
       52445775.5732422

       However, it hardly yields a value less than 8 digits digits bef
+ore
       the decimal, but that's besides the point.

 BTW - srand is called automatically in my version of perl, so i
       don't call it explicitly cause it makes my results duplicates 1
+/3 of
       the time.

=cut


for(0..99)
{
    print '     rand(       ', rand(time),"\n";
}

=head1 WHAT I TRIED

=pod

 Here come the un-signed integer examples.
 sprintf(".crazy.%08u.temp"   ,rand(time)) # min length 8, padd w/0
 sprintf(".crazy.%08.8u.temp" ,rand(time)) # min length 8 or 8, padd w
+/0
 sprintf(".crazy.%010u.temp"  ,rand(time)) # min length 10, padd w/0
 sprintf(".crazy.%0.8u.temp"  ,rand(time)) # not actually sure
 It's either padd with 0 w/min length of 8, or

 BTW - rand(time) yields results like:
 598318636.889648
 52445775.5732422

=head1 MY SOLUTION

 sprintf(".crazy.%08.8s.temp", sprintf("%u",rand(time)) );

 Feed sprintf an unsigned int, and then feed that unsigned int
 to a sprintf with 0 for padding and a string of max length 8
 and min length 8 (you gotta specify both to get a fixed width)

 or

 sprintf(".crazy.%08.8s.temp", int(rand(time)) );

 It's a little bit faster, cause it uses int, but it's the same shit.

=cut


print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%010.10s.temp", sprintf("%u",rand(
+time))) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print ' %010.10s(',
          sprintf(".crazy.%010.10s.temp", sprintf("%u",rand(time))),
          "\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%010.10s.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print ' %010.10s(',
          sprintf(".crazy.%010.10s.temp", int( rand(time) ) ),
          "\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%08u.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '     %08u(', sprintf(".crazy.%08u.temp",rand(time)),"\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%0.8u.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '    %0.8u(', sprintf(".crazy.%0.8u.temp",rand(time)),"\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%08.8u.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '   %08.8u(', sprintf(".crazy.%08.8u.temp",rand(time)),"\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%010u.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '    %010u(', sprintf(".crazy.%010u.temp",rand(time)),"\n";
}

=pod

 Here come the signed integer examples.
 sprintf(".crazy.%08d.temp"   , rand(time)))
 sprintf(".crazy.%0.8d.temp"  , rand(time)))
 sprintf(".crazy.%08.8d.temp" , rand(time)))
 sprintf(".crazy.%010d.temp"  , rand(time)))
 
 BTW - rand(time) always yields positive floats.

=cut

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%08d.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '     %08d(', sprintf(".crazy.%08d.temp",rand(time)), "\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%0.8d.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '    %0.8d(', sprintf(".crazy.%0.8d.temp",rand(time)), "\n";
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%08.8d.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '   %08.8d(', sprintf(".crazy.%08.8d.temp",rand(time)), "\n"
+;
}

print &_titled_hr(' sprintf(".crazy.%010d.temp",rand(time)) ');

for(0..99)
{
    print '    %010d(', sprintf(".crazy.%010d.temp",rand(time)), "\n";
}

exit;

sub _titled_hr
{
    my $string= join('', @_);
    my $oy = int (80 -(length $string) )/ 2;
       $oy -=2;
    return "\n ","-" x $oy, $string, "-" x $oy," \n";
};
######################################################################
+########
## END OF SCRIPT
__END__
[download]

Here is the test code, for what i was attempting (very messy)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Compress::Zlib;

my $userfile = '.crazyinsomniac.nodes.hashoaray.dat';
my $tempout = sprintf(".crazy.%010.10s.temp", int(rand(time)) );

for(0..10)
{
    &testshit;
    &cleanup_file;
}

sub testshit
{
    &compressor();
    
    for(0..100)
    {
        $tempout = sprintf(".crazy.%010.10s.temp", int(rand(time)) );
        &decompressor();
    }
}

sub cleanup_file
{
    unlink $tempout if -e $tempout;
    opendir(DIN,'.') or die "can't opendir . ($!)\n";
    my @files = grep {/^.crazy.(\d){10}.temp$/} readdir(DIN);
    print "trying to delete(",scalar(@files),"):\n", join "\n", @files
+,"\n";
    print 'successfully deleted ',(unlink @files)," files \n";
}

sub decompressor
{
    my $x = inflateInit() or die "Cannot create a inflation stream\n";
    my ($output, $status,$input);

    open(FIN , "<".$userfile.'.gz') or die "can't open $userfile($!)\n
+";
    open(FOUT, ">".$tempout)  or die "can't open $tempout.gz($!)\n";

    binmode FIN;
    binmode FOUT;

    while (read(FIN, $input, 4096))
    {
        ($output, $status) = $x->inflate(\$input) ;
         
        if( ( $status == Z_OK ) or ( $status == Z_STREAM_END ) )
        {
            print FOUT $output;
        }
        last if $status != Z_OK ;
    }
    close(FIN);
    close(FOUT);

    #unlink $tempout; # you will be deleted
    # since we don't wanna die before deleting this

    die "inflation failed\n" unless $status == Z_STREAM_END ;
}

sub compressor
{
    open(FIN , "<".$userfile) or die "can't open $userfile($!)\n";
    open(FOUT, ">".$userfile.'.gz')  or die "can't open $userfile.gz($
+!)\n";
    binmode FIN;
    binmode FOUT;
    my $deflation_stream = deflateInit() or die "Cannot create a defla
+tion stream\n";
    while (read(FIN, $_, 4096))
    {
        my ($output, $status) = $deflation_stream->deflate($_);
        $status == Z_OK or die "deflation failed\n";
        print FOUT $output ;
    }
    
    my ($output, $status) = $deflation_stream->flush();
    
    $status == Z_OK or die "deflation failed\n";
    
    print FOUT $output ;
}



sub sprinter
{
    for(0..1000)
    {
        print sprintf(".crazyinsomniac.%010u.xml_pimp.tpl",rand(time))
+,"\n";
        # print sprintf(".crazyinsomniac.%08.8s.xml_pimp.tpl",rand(tim
+e)),"\n";
        # its' fine if i use string, but it's supposed to be minimum l
+ength for int
        # but it doesn't pad with d (signed int), but it does with u.
        # unless it's 9 or > (cause input is always 8 or less)
        # is this flaw, or what?
        # this is really fucked up.  If i use 8, some strings don't ge
+t padded
        # if i use 9 or greater,  they do
    }
}
[download]

 
___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"