In debug and log messages, put the data at the end, not the middle.

In messages where a big string may be inserted, prefer “something something %s” over “something %s something”.

Example:
In this example, %s is a long hex-string representing an array’s contents.

Bad:

[DECODE] [DEBUG] Was passed array ‘%s’ for processing

Good:

[DECODE] [DEBUG] Was passed array for processing: ‘%s’

Best:

[DECODE] [DEBUG] Function myDecodeFunc called with myArray = ‘%s’

Windows features you didn’t know existed: start /b and start /priority

In popular Unix/Linux shells, there is an option to start a process in the “background” by (i.e. in bash) typing “./something &“, or pressing Ctrl-Z and then “bg“. The process then prints its output to stdout as usual, but the bash runs in the foreground and receives console stdin.

In Windows, something similar (much less powerful than the bash “jobs”, though) can be done by doing: start /b something

Python: Why to assign functions’ return values to dummy variables

In response to Kototama’s comment in the previous post:

There is a need, when running directly under the interpreter (code placed in the global namespace, not inside a function or method), to assign the return value of any function to a dummy variable.

data: URI

(None of this works in IE – use Firefox.)

The data: URI is a type of URI that contains the data that is returned, in the URI itself.

RealtimeCmd – hotkey for running cmd.exe in realtime priority

Sometimes your system hangs because some process enters a busy-loop that does evil things, like allocating huge amounts of memory and causing the swapfile manager to make Windows crawl. In those cases it would be nice to have something that runs in high priority that can kill the offending process. Microsoft addressed this by running winlogon.exe and taskmgr.exe in “High” priority, but that’s just not enough…

Windows features you didn’t know existed: clip

CLIP

Description:
    Redirects output of command line tools to the Windows clipboard.
    This text output can then be pasted into other programs.

Parameter List:
    /?                  Displays this help message.

Examples:
    DIR | CLIP          Places a copy of the current directory
                        listing into the Windows clipboard.

    CLIP < README.TXT   Places a copy of the text from readme.txt
                        on to the Windows clipboard.

Python tricks: “Press Enter to exit” on unhandled exception

When I write Python scripts on Windows, I often write a main() function, and when it throws an exception I don't handle, the console window closes immediately before giving me a chance to look at the traceback.

Writing matrix-style scripts

I like to write what I call “matrix-style scripts” – those are scripts that work in a command line window, get a few parameters at first and then just start running, filling the screen with text as they go along, like in The Matrix (or in Hollywood productions in general).

Magic values on the MSVCRT debug heap

I’d always had a feeling that the MSVCRT heap (malloc, free, new, delete) don’t just call the Win32 heap-management functions, but do some work of their own. So I investigated…

void hexdump(const void * buf, size_t size)

Simple hexdump function in C