It’s fun to play around with Python. One of its best features is the interactive shell where we can experiment all we want. Let’s say you open up a shell, declare a bunch of variables and want to operate on them. You don’t want to type the full variables names over and over again, right? Also, it’s difficult to remember the full names of all the inbuilt methods and functions as well. Since we are playing around with the same variables and inbuilt functions, it would be nice to have an autocomplete feature that can complete the variable and function names for us. Fortunately, Python provides that nifty little feature! Let’s see how we can enable it here. Continue reading “Enabling Tab Autocomplete In Python Shell”
Tag: Shell
CMake vs Make
Programmers have been using CMake and Make for a long time now. When you join a big company or start working on a project with a large codebase, there are all these builds that you need to take care of. You must have seen those “CMakeLists.txt” files floating around. You are supposed to run “cmake” and “make” commands on the terminal. A lot of people just follow the instructions blindly, not really caring about why we need to do things in a certain way. What is this whole build process and why is it structured this way? What are the differences between CMake and Make? Does it matter? Are they interchangeable? Continue reading “CMake vs Make”
Programming Paradigms: Object Oriented vs Data Oriented
Over the last couple of decades, different programming paradigms have emerged in an attempt to make software better. Different situations demand different requirements, so it wouldn’t be fair to say that one paradigm is better than the other. Whenever you want to create a software system, you usually write code that attempts to fulfill most of the requirements. Now the difference between these paradigms is the way in which you write your code. On one end of the spectrum, we have object oriented programming. The world revolves around pieces of data here and functionalities are attached to them. On the other end of the spectrum, we have data oriented programming. In this paradigm, everything is just data. How does that work? What exactly is this spectrum and how do we understand it? Continue reading “Programming Paradigms: Object Oriented vs Data Oriented”
Operation Aurora
On January 14, 2010 McAfee Labs identified a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer that was used as an entry point for Operation Aurora to exploit Google and at least 20 other companies. Microsoft issued a security bulletin and patch immediately. Operation Aurora was a coordinated attack which included a piece of computer code that exploits the Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerability to gain access to computer systems. This exploit is then extended to download and activate malware within the systems. The attack, which was initiated stealthily when targeted users accessed a malicious web page, ultimately connected those computer systems to a remote server. Now this connection was used to steal company intellectual property and additionally gain access to user accounts. Why did the users visit the malicious web page? Likely because they believed it to be reputable. This attack became particularly famous because of the level of sophistication and the obfuscation methods used. Continue reading “Operation Aurora”
Command Line Within Python
One of the cool things about Python is that you can do absolutely anything and everything with it. This blog post deals with using command line within Python. When you are writing your code in Python, you might want to access the command line to run a couple of commands like ls, grep, make etc. If it were a shell script, you could directly write that command and it will get executed as if you were on the command line. But shell scripting will only provide limited functionalities. So how do we do it in Python? Continue reading “Command Line Within Python”
What Is SSH?
Consider the following situation. You are at your friend’s place with your laptop and you want to access your home computer to do something. May be you want to start a download or you want to run a program right away. What would you do in this situation? Will you go all the way to your house just to start a download? You already have a laptop at your disposal, so you should be able to use it somehow. You can just connect to your home computer through internet. But what if someone else hacks you while you do that? This is where SSH comes in. Continue reading “What Is SSH?”
Rooting Your Phone
A lot of Android devices are being activated everyday. We hear the term ‘rooting’ floating around all the time. Most of the people don’t bother to tinker with their phones. They just want to enjoy their device as it is. Some people think that rooting their phone will break the software or damage their phone in some way, and so they don’t want to mess around. What exactly is rooting? Do we even need to root our phones? If so, why exactly do we need to root our phones? Continue reading “Rooting Your Phone”
Inside The Shell of Shell Scripting
I’m pretty sure people working in the tech domain are aware of something called Shell Scripting. Were you ever working on a project and felt that some tasks were repeating over and over again? Did you feel that there should be an easy way to automate these things and you don’t have to worry about it every single time you want to run your project? People who have heard about shell scripting and don’t know what it is, you are missing out on a cool weapon in your arsenal. People who haven’t heard about shell scripting, well it’s time to move you into the other category. So what exactly is shell scripting? Continue reading “Inside The Shell of Shell Scripting”
Perpetual Enigma 