alien_nmake.pl

Automatically download, unpack and install nmake 1.5 from microsoft.
The downloaded and unpacked files will be compared with known valid
checksums and if there are any mismatches the files will not be execut
+ed
or installed. The install location will by default be the Perl 'bin'
directory.

If the script detects nmake already installed it will do nothing.

Options are:

   --help|-h        Print out this documentation
   --verbose        Be verbose during installation process
   --force          Download and install it regardless
   --path           Specify the install location, if the direction doe
+s 
                    not exist it will be created.

Many thanks to Microsoft for making this essential tool available to 
all for free.
[download]

I often have to split up text files for consumption in Excel. A convenient way of splitting up a file meaningfully is to split it up by the value of a column. The program does this by accumulating the input into a hash of arrays keyed by the column value.

There is an awk oneliner (I'm told) that circumvents the memory limitations this program encounters:

awk -F '{ print $0 > $3 }' FILES
[download]

If you want something like this program in a module, see List::Part

Update: Also see join - join two files according to a common key. If you need one, you'll likely need the other too.

Update: v0.03 now can part according to more than one column.

Update: v0.04 now can output multiple header lines into every file.

Update: v0.06 fixes two errors: The column at the end of each line couldn't be used (well) as the key column. Header lines are now actually printed.

Update: Now there also is a Github repository for the case that you want to submit a patch.

Update: The code is now also on CPAN as App::part.

There's no particular reason to use POE::Component::RSSAggregator rather than XML::RSS::Feed, other than the fact that I heard about the POE version first and was interested in trying something in POE. (Thanks again everyone for helping me get around the problems due to my out-of-date POE in POE::Component::RSSAggregator breaks LWP::Simple::get.)

Also, I heartily recommend this station to everyone!