Tobermory posted:

I once had to work with some hideous CSV format that used single comma as a delimiter and double comma as an escaped single comma. "String 1, with comma" followed by "String 2" was saved as "String 1,, with comma,String 2". It was surreally terrible to use.

Don Gato posted:

In traditional Chinese characters. Written into a word doc and no punctuation

Tobermory posted:

Empty fields were filled with a single white space, which was then converted to empty during parsing. When there were three commas in a row, it was assumed to be an escaped comma followed by the end of cell. There was no way to store a value beginning with a comma.

Double Punctuation posted:

Traditional Chinese characters in a plain text file, except it’s one of those files that Notepad misdetects the encoding of and it shows up as something entirely different when you reopen it.

Unperson_47 posted:

I wanna know the WORST way to store data in plaintext.

Platystemon posted:

Parsing the FAA’s wind forecasts:

Wind direction and speed get a four‐digit block.

The first two are magnetic azimuth, in tens of degrees. The latter two are speed in knots.

Wind ten degrees west of south at ninety‐nine knots would be 1999.

But wait! What if the wind speed crosses a hundred knots?

I’m glad you asked.

In that case, you subtract a hundred from the wind speed and add fifty to wind direction.

Let’s say the wind direction is still the same, and now it’s a hundred and sixty‐nine knots. Now it’s denoted with 6969.

Wind data can also be encountered six‐digit groups. Surely this must be giving three digits to each component, right?

Wrong. The wind digits are unchanged. Temperature just got appended to it. 696969 is wind ten degrees west of south, blowing a hundred and sixty‐nine knots, with ambient air temperature of sixty‐nine degrees Celsius.

Sixty‐nine degrees Celsius is an unreasonably high temperature. You’d never see it in a real forecast. Except you might, because negative sixty‐nine degrees can be seen at altitude.

That raises the question “how are negative and positive temperatures differentiated?”

Oh. That’s easy. Negative temperatures have a minus sign in front of them. So that 696969 should really be 6969-69.

…except when it isn’t, because the preface to the forecast informed you that all temperatures above FL240 were below zero so they would be omitting all the signs.



What a sensible system.

If there were any positive temperatures, they have plus signs, as seen below in the chart for Colorado and nearby states.

Carbon dioxide posted:

At least Celsius temperatures are unlikely to get lower than -100 or higher than 100, on Earth.

Carthag Tuek posted:

they even usually stay within -50 – 50

lets make a new scale where
* the freezing point is 50
* 0 is the lowest measured temperature on earth
* 100 is the highest

then adjust it yearly based on new records

SubNat posted:

Ah, a fun scale where 0-49.99... and 50-100 convert differently.
I think the current records are along the lines of -88C, 58C.
0-49.99... is 1Tuek = 1.76C, 50-100 is 1Tuek = 1.16C.

Platystemon posted:

Parsing the FAA’s wind forecasts:


What a sensible system.

gleebster posted:

I just want to know if I need to take a jacket.

Carthag Tuek posted:

I would like it if this doxxed me. Alas.

Karia posted:

The problem with all of these methods is that they require knowledge of exactly what format is being used. I propose an unambiguous standard for temperature communication based based on relative comparison. Every temperature should be stored as a list of tuples (double, bool). The doubles form a range from the minimum to maximum temperatures with whatever resolution you want. The bool says whether the recorded temperature is less than that specific value. So to record -15 degrees C on a scale from -50 to 0 with a resolution of 10 degrees, you would write:

code:

(-50 false)
(-40 false)
(-30 false)
(-20 false)
(-10 true )
(  0 true )

However, it is not entirely clear if the temperature is being recorded in Celsius or Fahrenheit. This is easy to rectify: record both. For example, -15 C is 5 degrees F, so we could write:

code:

(-30 false false)
(-20 false false)
(-10 true  false)
(  0 true  false)
( 10 true  true )

From this encoding, the temperature and measurement scale can both be inferred with arbitrary resolution.

Count Roland posted:

Related:

quote:

ColorForth (written with "color" in red and "Forth" in green) is a dialect of ForthLanguage that uses color to replace punctuation and simplify the parser and compiler. It was designed by ChuckMoore, the original inventor of Forth.

Shammypants posted:

It's 8 o'clock at the end of a new day, you tell me.

flatluigi posted:

https://twitter.com/tarenceray/status/1261082214223286272

Platystemon posted:

Parsing the FAA’s wind forecasts:

Platystemon posted:

“We want a V‐shaped recovery.”

The monkey’s paw curls.

Carbon dioxide posted:

There's this new tv show called Snowpiercer.

The first season hasn't fully aired yet but basically, humanity hosed up, the earth froze over, and the only people left alive are those in a big-rear end train (called Snowpiercer) that continuously circles the world. It's year 7 since the train started.

The train is divided into classes with the richest in first class and so on, there's also an agricultural section so they have food, and all the way in the back there's a group of people who started out as stowaways. They're mostly left alone, live in extreme poverty, get scraps of food from the train staff, and the only reason the staff seems to keep them alive is in case they ever need them for tasks.

The train operators will do literally anything to 1. keep the "balance" (amount of food produced, amount of people on board) and 2. to keep the train running, because the train runs on handwavium such that even a tiny reduction in speed causes power outages all over the train. If they go too slow they would stall and everyone would die of the cold.

And because I'm apparently blind to such things, it took me a friend to point it out before I realized this is the most obvious metaphor for modern capitalism ever.

Carthag Tuek posted:

they even usually stay within -50 – 50

lets make a new scale where
* the freezing point is 50
* 0 is the lowest measured temperature on earth
* 100 is the highest

then adjust it yearly based on new records

Carthag Tuek posted:

they even usually stay within -50 – 50

lets make a new scale where
* the freezing point is 50
* 0 is the lowest measured temperature on earth
* 100 is the highest

then adjust it yearly based on new records

SerialKilldeer posted:

BonHair posted:

North as up is completely arbitrary though. I remember being super confused about Upper and Lower Egypt as a child because they used south as up for obvious Nile-related reasons.

Carthag Tuek posted:

gently caress yeah this is my jam

i wonder if we can somehow get gps in there cause you know its warmer in the sun than it is in the shade

Tashilicious posted:

same with upper and lower canada in my history class.

still not sure which is which

BonHair posted:

North as up is completely arbitrary though. I remember being super confused about Upper and Lower Egypt as a child because they used south as up for obvious Nile-related reasons.