11.12. One-Pointed Mind
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## 11.12. One-Pointed Mind

As a student of Zen, I like the idea of a one-pointed mind: Do one thing at a time, and do it well.

This, indeed, is very much how UNIX® works as well. While a typical Windows® application is attempting to do everything imaginable (and is, therefore, riddled with bugs), a typical UNIX® program does only one thing, and it does it well.

The typical UNIX® user then essentially assembles his own applications by writing a shell script which combines the various existing programs by piping the output of one program to the input of another.

When writing your own UNIX® software, it is generally a good idea to see what parts of the problem you need to solve can be handled by existing programs, and only write your own programs for that part of the problem that you do not have an existing solution for.

### 11.12.1. CSV

I will illustrate this principle with a specific real-life example I was faced with recently:

I needed to extract the 11th field of each record from a database I downloaded from a web site. The database was a CSV file, i.e., a list of comma-separated values. That is quite a standard format for sharing data among people who may be using different database software.

The first line of the file contains the list of various fields separated by commas. The rest of the file contains the data listed line by line, with values separated by commas.

I tried awk, using the comma as a separator. But because several lines contained a quoted comma, awk was extracting the wrong field from those lines.

Therefore, I needed to write my own software to extract the 11th field from the CSV file. However, going with the UNIX® spirit, I only needed to write a simple filter that would do the following:

- Remove the first line from the file;

- Change all unquoted commas to a different character;

- Remove all quotation marks.

Strictly speaking, I could use sed to remove the first line from the file, but doing so in my own program was very easy, so I decided to do it and reduce the size of the pipeline.

At any rate, writing a program like this took me about 20 minutes. Writing a program that extracts the 11th field from the CSV file would take a lot longer, and I could not reuse it to extract some other field from some other database.

This time I decided to let it do a little more work than a typical tutorial program would:

- It parses its command line for options;

- It displays proper usage if it finds wrong arguments;

- It produces meaningful error messages.

Here is its usage message:

Usage: csv [-t<delim>] [-c<comma>] [-p] [-o <outfile>] [-i <infile>]

All parameters are optional, and can appear in any order.

The `-t` parameter declares what to replace the commas with. The `tab` is the default here. For example, `-t;` will replace all unquoted commas with semicolons.

I did not need the `-c` option, but it may come in handy in the future. It lets me declare that I want a character other than a comma replaced with something else. For example, `-c@` will replace all at signs (useful if you want to split a list of email addresses to their user names and domains).

The `-p` option preserves the first line, i.e., it does not delete it. By default, we delete the first line because in a CSV file it contains the field names rather than data.

The `-i` and `-o` options let me specify the input and the output files. Defaults are `stdin` and `stdout`, so this is a regular UNIX® filter.

I made sure that both `-i filename` and `-ifilename` are accepted. I also made sure that only one input and one output files may be specified.

To get the 11th field of each record, I can now do:

`%` `csv '-t;' `data.csv` | awk '-F;' '{print $11}'`

The code stores the options (except for the file descriptors) in `EDX`: The comma in `DH`, the new separator in `DL`, and the flag for the `-p` option in the highest bit of `EDX`, so a check for its sign will give us a quick decision what to do.

Here is the code:

;;;;;;; csv.asm ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; ; Convert a comma-separated file to a something-else separated file. ; ; Started: 31-May-2001 ; Updated: 1-Jun-2001 ; ; Copyright (c) 2001 G. Adam Stanislav ; All rights reserved. ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; %include 'system.inc' %define BUFSIZE 2048 section .data fd.in dd stdin fd.out dd stdout usg db 'Usage: csv [-t<delim>] [-c<comma>] [-p] [-o <outfile>] [-i <infile>]', 0Ah usglen equ $-usg iemsg db "csv: Can't open input file", 0Ah iemlen equ $-iemsg oemsg db "csv: Can't create output file", 0Ah oemlen equ $-oemsg section .bss ibuffer resb BUFSIZE obuffer resb BUFSIZE section .text align 4 ierr: push dword iemlen push dword iemsg push dword stderr sys.write push dword 1 ; return failure sys.exit align 4 oerr: push dword oemlen push dword oemsg push dword stderr sys.write push dword 2 sys.exit align 4 usage: push dword usglen push dword usg push dword stderr sys.write push dword 3 sys.exit align 4 global _start _start: add esp, byte 8 ; discard argc and argv[0] mov edx, (',' << 8) | 9 .arg: pop ecx or ecx, ecx je near .init ; no more arguments ; ECX contains the pointer to an argument cmp byte [ecx], '-' jne usage inc ecx mov ax, [ecx] .o: cmp al, 'o' jne .i ; Make sure we are not asked for the output file twice cmp dword [fd.out], stdout jne usage ; Find the path to output file - it is either at [ECX+1], ; i.e., -ofile -- ; or in the next argument, ; i.e., -o file inc ecx or ah, ah jne .openoutput pop ecx jecxz usage .openoutput: push dword 420 ; file mode (644 octal) push dword 0200h | 0400h | 01h ; O_CREAT | O_TRUNC | O_WRONLY push ecx sys.open jc near oerr add esp, byte 12 mov [fd.out], eax jmp short .arg .i: cmp al, 'i' jne .p ; Make sure we are not asked twice cmp dword [fd.in], stdin jne near usage ; Find the path to the input file inc ecx or ah, ah jne .openinput pop ecx or ecx, ecx je near usage .openinput: push dword 0 ; O_RDONLY push ecx sys.open jc near ierr ; open failed add esp, byte 8 mov [fd.in], eax jmp .arg .p: cmp al, 'p' jne .t or ah, ah jne near usage or edx, 1 << 31 jmp .arg .t: cmp al, 't' ; redefine output delimiter jne .c or ah, ah je near usage mov dl, ah jmp .arg .c: cmp al, 'c' jne near usage or ah, ah je near usage mov dh, ah jmp .arg align 4 .init: sub eax, eax sub ebx, ebx sub ecx, ecx mov edi, obuffer ; See if we are to preserve the first line or edx, edx js .loop .firstline: ; get rid of the first line call getchar cmp al, 0Ah jne .firstline .loop: ; read a byte from stdin call getchar ; is it a comma (or whatever the user asked for)? cmp al, dh jne .quote ; Replace the comma with a tab (or whatever the user wants) mov al, dl .put: call putchar jmp short .loop .quote: cmp al, '"' jne .put ; Print everything until you get another quote or EOL. If it ; is a quote, skip it. If it is EOL, print it. .qloop: call getchar cmp al, '"' je .loop cmp al, 0Ah je .put call putchar jmp short .qloop align 4 getchar: or ebx, ebx jne .fetch call read .fetch: lodsb dec ebx ret read: jecxz .read call write .read: push dword BUFSIZE mov esi, ibuffer push esi push dword [fd.in] sys.read add esp, byte 12 mov ebx, eax or eax, eax je .done sub eax, eax ret align 4 .done: call write ; flush output buffer ; close files push dword [fd.in] sys.close push dword [fd.out] sys.close ; return success push dword 0 sys.exit align 4 putchar: stosb inc ecx cmp ecx, BUFSIZE je write ret align 4 write: jecxz .ret ; nothing to write sub edi, ecx ; start of buffer push ecx push edi push dword [fd.out] sys.write add esp, byte 12 sub eax, eax sub ecx, ecx ; buffer is empty now .ret: ret

Much of it is taken from `hex.asm` above. But there is one important difference: I no longer call `write` whenever I am outputting a line feed. Yet, the code can be used interactively.

I have found a better solution for the interactive problem since I first started writing this chapter. I wanted to make sure each line is printed out separately only when needed. After all, there is no need to flush out every line when used non-interactively.

The new solution I use now is to call `write` every time I find the input buffer empty. That way, when running in the interactive mode, the program reads one line from the user's keyboard, processes it, and sees its input buffer is empty. It flushes its output and reads the next line.

#### 11.12.1.1. The Dark Side of Buffering

This change prevents a mysterious lockup in a very specific case. I refer to it as the dark side of buffering, mostly because it presents a danger that is not quite obvious.

It is unlikely to happen with a program like the csv above, so let us consider yet another filter: In this case we expect our input to be raw data representing color values, such as the red, green, and blue intensities of a pixel. Our output will be the negative of our input.

Such a filter would be very simple to write. Most of it would look just like all the other filters we have written so far, so I am only going to show you its inner loop:

.loop: call getchar not al ; Create a negative call putchar jmp short .loop

Because this filter works with raw data, it is unlikely to be used interactively.

But it could be called by image manipulation software. And, unless it calls `write` before each call to `read`, chances are it will lock up.

Here is what might happen:

1. The image editor will load our filter using the C function `popen()`.

2. It will read the first row of pixels from a bitmap or pixmap.

3. It will write the first row of pixels to the pipe leading to the `fd.in` of our filter.

4. Our filter will read each pixel from its input, turn it to a negative, and write it to its output buffer.

5. Our filter will call `getchar` to fetch the next pixel.

6. `getchar` will find an empty input buffer, so it will call `read`.

7. `read` will call the `SYS_read` system call.

8. The kernel will suspend our filter until the image editor sends more data to the pipe.

9. The image editor will read from the other pipe, connected to the `fd.out` of our filter so it can set the first row of the output image before it sends us the second row of the input.

10. The kernel suspends the image editor until it receives some output from our filter, so it can pass it on to the image editor.

At this point our filter waits for the image editor to send it more data to process, while the image editor is waiting for our filter to send it the result of the processing of the first row. But the result sits in our output buffer.

The filter and the image editor will continue waiting for each other forever (or, at least, until they are killed). Our software has just entered a race condition.

This problem does not exist if our filter flushes its output buffer before asking the kernel for more input data.

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