Yeah, ok, I'll admit it: we Scots would give the Irish a run for their money when it comes to swearing.

It would have to be amazingly sophisticated to filter out all the swearing. Or is that just me? :-D

- python in general - the UnxUtils package which gives you all of the main unix command-line tools ported to windows - I always use the command line versions of source-management that I use or my clients use - svn, mercurial, git so that you can script with them - the InfoZip zip tools, though to be honest, I tend to use the 7-zip exe more nowadays - sysinternals ps tools for remote management - the ImageMagic toolset for image manipulation (especially mogrify and convert) - wget and curl I'd better stop before I just list everything :-) Kev

Got to disagree here, or at least point out that its not as clear-cut as you're suggesting. Even if the techs in a big corporate are developing *for* linux, the rest of the company are going to be using windows and some corporate type is not going to want to put up with linux office tools and the rest, especially if they're not technical themselves. There's a good chance they've not even heard of linux either. Then you've got the fact that the IT department that's been hired is trained and experienced in windows admin, the infrastructure is already in place for SMS management and the like. Inertia is a big problem. Kev

Ouch. And did you pass your class? :^)

Hi, I'm merely passing this on following a conversation I had with my dad the other night but thought it deserved a mention. I've no reason to doubt him on this one. I think. A bit of background - my dad started work in computers back in the '70s (and did indeed use punch cards and such like). Eventually, they had a simple editor, higher-level languages were being used and programs were getting more complex and at some point, contractors from the States were over writing some applications for them. He claims he still shudders at the memory of looking at their code after they'd gone and discovering that they'd left a small chunk of their homeland behind - the majority of variable and function names were named after baseball players... Kev

You're closer with Socket.Select rather than the others which work on WaitHandles. I'll look into getting a WaitHandle-based object associated with a socket so I could use the regular WaitForMultipleObjects but the client's happy with the socket-workaround I told in last mail. Thanks again. K

You gave me a brief glimmer of hope there that I hadn't read the docs properly and that it was something that obvious, but no. :( Socket.Select() does only work with sockets. I've given up now to be honest. I'll go with Socket.Select() with an internal control socket that, when data is read from it, is the signal to close down the main socket. Not ideal, but it's a close enough workaround that it's still clear what's happening in the ported code even though the events have been swapped for sockets. As being close and preserving the overall code structure is what I've been asked to do, it's good enough. Thanks very much for the response anyway! Kev

Hi, I've got some C++ code to convert to C# and I'd prefer the C# to be as similar in design to the legacy code as possible (not my original design). Currently, I'm not having much luck finding an equivalent to WSAWaitForMultipleEvents() that lives in the managed world. Also, the current architecture doesn't allow for a higher-level repackaging with a C++/CLI. Could anyone point me towards it if I'm just not seeing it in MSDN after staring at the screen for too long, or alternatively put me out my misery so I know I've just got to go with a rethink and rework and new time estimate. Thanks v. much in advance, Kev

Sorry - don't know what toad is, but if you've got access to Apache, you could try phpMyAdmin to get a nice web interface (with the advantage of external access). Kev

Hi, anything like the problem I was having - see below? Here the problem was that the control was looking for application configuration information from the Load event handler. Alternatively, could you be trying to use your own controls that VS can't find the assemblies for? Kev

Hi, sorry for not replying earlier - this is perfect, thanks. I know, pretty obvious - just wasn't spotting it or searching with the correct terms. Cheers, Kev

Hi, any pointers here would be highly appreciated. I'm refactoring part of a dialog box into a UserControl so that it can be used from another dialog. Nothing fancy there. My problem is that when the control loads, it populates its own sub-controls using data read from a database. The connection string for the database is read from the application's config file. This means that when you place the control from the toolbox onto another dialog, VS (2005 team edition) gives an error as it can't find the connection string (in its own config file!). I can work round this by adding all of the initialisation code into a function that is called by the control's container during construction. However, its not the easiest and cleanest interface to my control and I'm sure there must be a neater way of doing this that I'm just not spotting, e.g. a method override that's an appropriate place, or labelling the configuration method with a DevStudio attribute so that the configuration method doesnt get called? Maybe there's a better way of tackling the whole configuration problem? Anyway, thanks v. much for any help ou can give. Kev