Can you help me? I need a batch file that do copy certain file base on date in a folder, to another network drive.

thanks

adrinne

An hour later wondering why my $this and $that tests weren't working!

I was having this problem on a new install of Apache 2.2.8, PHP 5.2.5, and MySQL 5.1.22 on Windows Vista Home Premium. 

My first mistake downloading only the PHP installer. This does not include the extensions. Download the zip package and copy the extensions folder from it into your PHP directory. Edit php.ini, go to the dynamic extensions section and add the following

extension = php_mysqli.dll;
extension = php_mysql.dll;

Make sure the extensions directory is set to the correct path. Reboot Apache...

I was still getting the same error - call to undefined function. I spent a few hours on google looking for the answer. This included copying php.ini, php_mysql.dll. php_mysqli.dll and libmysql.dll into and out of various directories including c:\windows and c:\windows\system 32. None of which worked. 

Back to the drawing board. phpinfo records the extensions path as being c:\php5. There's the answer. There is no such folder and this isn't where extension_dir is pointed in php.ini? Why would it be picking up this directory?

As a shortcut I create the folder and copy the extensions into it. It still doesn't work. I edit php.ini and change the slashes on the extensions directory and try various symantics

• c:\program files\php\ext
• c:/program files/php/ext
• c:/program files/php/ext/

Reboot Apache each time but it still doesn't work and the extension directory in phpinfo is still pointing at the spectral c:\php5. Where is it picking this up?  I find a few forums suggesting it's a permissions problem. I disable all security settings, turn off User Account Control and open all access to php.ini. It doesn't make a difference, I still get the same message. 

Back to basics. I open the Apache configuration file. It turns out the solution is a lot simpler. PHPIniDir in httpd.conf is incorrect. It's pointing to a folder which doesn't exist so windows has been using defaults to locate the files. Change the folder name to the correct path "C:\Program Files\PHP\" including the closing slash. Restart Apache. Eureka.

I'm not the first person to have this problem. I won't be the last, if you stumble on this post while you're having problems with an install concentrate on phpinfo,  particularly the Loaded Configuration File and the extension_dir, and yes double check the settings on your web server.

With the consistent wording, these recommendations clearly originate from Microsoft rather than clinical engineering tests. Microsoft are heavily incentivising manufacturers to push Vista which has unbelievably been in development since 2001, consuming Microsoft people and money. Despite this, Vista, delivered three years late, doesn't perform any better than XP and needs some serious hardware just to run the graphical "Aero" interface such as 1GB of system memory and a 40GB hard drive capacity.  

Business customers running Vista Business were thrown a life buoy, being quietly allowed to "downgrade" to XP. Retail customers, however, don't have the same licensing choice. If you have it, you're stuck with it. The main change in Vista is the unnecessary user interface and an improved search function as it tries to catch up with Google. Oh, and My Computer has been renamed Computer.

With Vista OS I am reminded of the Apple II being replaced with the Apple III in the early 1980s. The Apple III was designed by Marketeers and was the beginning of the end of Apples leading market position until it started to find itself again with the iPod. Vista has the look and feel of a development being led by Marketeers, it's not an operating system of choice.

So what is the alternative? As you can't seem to buy a laptop with XP you can return to Apple and the MAC OS (once it's not the "leopard" 10.5) or you can build your own with a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, i.e. buy a Vista Laptop and uninstall the Vista OS. For the moment, my choice is not to buy.

Is it any wonder Vista is ranked number one by PC World as the biggest tech disappointment of 2007?

1. Windows Vista
2. The High Definition format War
3. Facebook Beacon
4. Yahoo
5. Apple iPhone
6. The Broadband Industry
7. Voice Over IP
8. Apple "Leopard" OS 10.5
9. Microsoft Office 2007
10. Wireless Carriers
11. Microsoft Zune
12. Internet Security
13. Social Networks
14. Municipal WiMax
15. Amazon Unbox

I've also posted this on really annoying shit dot com

I have a small table of data, four columns wide. There are two row entries.

I want a summary of  the data in the table. Specifically I am after a sum of column C where the code in column A is A, and I want the sum of column D where the code in column B is B. In both cases this should give me a result of 200 or -200.

The respective formulae to summarise by A code are =SUMIF(A:C,F2,C:C) and =SUMIF(B:D,F2,D:D). The respective formulae to summarise by B code are =SUMIF(A:C,F3,C:C) and =SUMIF(B:D,F3,D:D).

The results given....

As you can see, Excel incorrectly returns a value of -200 against the B code in the summary of column C. Did you get the same result? This is a very simplistic example to  illustrate the need to validate any report or analysis performed with Excel before publishing.

Of course, how you organise your data is also relevant. If the table were instead organised as follows

the correct result is returned.

In order to do so you have to add in an extra step. Get your menu ready, press the PrtSc button. Open Microsoft Paint or similar and paste the result, using Ctrl V or the edit menu. If you use a photo package your screen shot quality won't degrade as it will if you copy directly into Word.

At this point you can click the capture button in Snagit and select the menu region as in the example above.

Snagit is a very nifty screen capture program from TechSmith, very good for creating documents quickly, or for editing, annotating or sharing your screen shots. It's priced at $39.95 for a single user licence.

Use to identify all rows where, for example, a description field, contains a certain word. Perhaps you are looking for every row which contains the word "VAT".

=SEARCH("VAT",A1,1)

where column A contains the description field.

If the string is not found the #VALUE error is returned. If the string is found you are given the starting position it occurs. In the above example, the word "VAT" starts at the third character.

To tidy up the results you can use the ISERR function to determine whether or not the error will occur. i.e. FALSE means the text is found, TRUE means it isn't.

=ISERR(SEARCH("VAT",A1,1))

Then use the IF function for a final tidy up. If the ISERR function is TRUE don't return anything, otherwise display "Matching String" in the cell.

=IF(ISERR(SEARCH("VAT",A1,1))=TRUE,"","Matching String")

Use the SEARCH function with caution. In this example I was searching for the word VAT. This letter sequence is contained in other words, such as Novation, which may not be quite what you were you looking for in your results. If you are running the function over a large dataset you might not pick up this logical error.

I've used this to get around not being able to copy headers and footers in Excel and to avoid copying common drawing objects such as a logo and text boxes. By having these set in the template I didn't need to copy them each time the process looped.

As geocode data is freely available in countries such as Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, France and the USA various hacks have been devised for the UK, including community compiled post code databases, and a petition, which can only be doomed to fail, to try and force the Royal Mail to release their data for free.

The Royal Mail is in the process of revising it's pricing structure, recognising it has in the past favoured larger organisations. The price changes are being phased in and will culminate in all licences being replaced with new terms and conditions on 1st September, 2009. Although these changes are welcome it still means the data isn't free and websites which are non commercial or have low levels of users may still need to look elsewhere if they wish to include mapping information in their web applications.

UK Post Codes are made up of two parts as in SW1A 2AA, the post code for Number 10 Downing Street. The first part is the outward code identifying the delivery office the mail has to go to, and the second part is the inward code which, when combined with the building name or number, gives the delivery point.

The district codes (approximately 2,800) with latitude and longitude coordinates can be downloaded from Jibble, but if you want more precision in your maps you need to look at the full post code unit. 

The definitive tutorial on geocoding UK postcodes with Google Map API was written by Tom Anthony on his blog earlier in the year. He has since followed it up with Caching Google Maps Geocoder Results, another easy to follow well written tutorial on how to, at least temporarily, save your results. For a complete post code unit, however, there are on average 15 addresses so basing a marker on the post code unit will not be precisely accurate, i.e. it will not identify a specific address. To do that you need to include the building name or number.

Tom's method is based on form imput of the post code, but if you already have the post code in a database you can just call the javascript function directly, as in

<script type="text/javascript">
usePointFromPostcode('<?php echo $postcode; ?>', placeMarkerAtPoint);
</script>

The result, however, is a proximity map rather than identifying a specific address. Remember there are approximately 27 million addresses in the UK and only 1.7 million post codes.

Post Code data is not static and for licensed copies of the Royal Mail data there are regular updates. If you pass lat and long coordinates back into a database to avoid hitting the Google or Multimap servers to obtain the coordinates there is a risk, probably quite remote, of your data being out of date. You could mitigate this by adding a date field to your database table so you could check the lat long coordinates at a frequency, say every six months, or a year.

The API keys for Google Maps and Google Search can be optained from

• Google Maps
• Google Search

startdate is the parameter value and the where condition would then include the parameter as follows

The example below I saved for use in a batch file. A user could then click the batch file which would open SQLPlus and prompt the user for the query parameters including a "Save File As" prompt, as the output was generating a csv file. The batch file icon can be changed in Windows to something other than the default, something more meaningful for the user.

The appearance might be very retro, but its a simple tool of the "cheap and cheerful" variety and the user is, after all, more interested in the output file.

To exit SQLPlus automatically skip a line after your last query and type exit as in

Save the file as runall.sql. Then use this file in your batch file

Browsers have different defaults. Internet Explorer seems to have more than others, so if you design and test using only IE your pages may not display properly in other browsers. As a rule you should test your site with other browsers before publishing it.

There is hack you can use for Internet Explorer to ensure it reads the right CSS and your site is cross browser compliant. This hack is achieved by simply adding !important to the css you want Internet Explorer to ignore. The following CSS creates similar font size across browsers. IE ignores the first line, whereas Firefox applies the first line.

As another rule you should try to not mix your stylesheet with inline CSS, i.e. if you define an element in your stylesheet then add some inline CSS to it, the stylesheet CSS may be completely ignored and you may end up with a result you don't want..