COMP 1238

Introduction to
Data Management

Manipulating text
COMP 1238

Introduction to Data
Management

Starting at 1:05
Monday, Sept 23
◎ AtKlass: ????
◎ AtKlass reg: S8A0
COMP 1238 – Intro to Data
Management

Starting Zoom recording

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In previous episodes …
◎ History and structure of written text and numbers
◎ Bits, Bytes, ASCII encoding
◎ Markup languages

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WORKIN
G WITH
TEXT
Agenda
◎ Keyboards, touch-typing and keyboard shortcuts
◎ Text editors - notepad, vi, VSCode
◎ Searching in text - wildcards and the basics of regexp
◎ Lab prep – GitHub Pages

Objective:
Lay the foundation for mastery of tools used by IT practitioners day-to-day but often taken
for granted, focusing on keyboard and text editors.

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Mastering
the
Keyboard

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Why Master the Keyboard?
◎ Keyboard and mouse are the main ways of controlling
the the computer
◎ Mouse and touchpad/screen seem intuitive enough
◎ With keyboard we see way too many people struggling
with slow, frustrating and unhealthy habits.
Repetitive strain injury can be debilitating

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Keyboards come in
many shapes and
sizes

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IBM Model M
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Standard 104 key
layout

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Physical, visual, and functional
layouts

◎ Physical – arrangement & shapes of keys

◎ Visual - labeling of keys
◎ Functional - software response to a key press

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Layouts for non-latin scripts

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QWERTY & country specific layouts

Layouts usually named

after the top left row
QWERTZ is common in
Germany, Eastern Europe
and Portugal

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Dvorak layout & other exotics

Layouts usually named

after the top left row, but
Dvorak layout is named
after August Dvorak

See also: Colemak layout

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Modifier keys
A modifier key temporarily modifies the normal action of another key

⇧ Shift
⌃ Ctrl – Control
⎇ Alt – Alternate – also labelled ⌥ Option on Apple keyboards.
⌘ Cmd – Command key, Apple keyboards
⊞ Win – Windows logo on Windows keyboards

Fn (Function) – used on small-layout keyboards, or keyboard where the top row of function
keys have multimedia functions like controlling audio volume

Modifiers on Space Cadet keyboard (designed in 1978) 16

Shortcuts – Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Z …

◎ Use shortcuts, they help a lot

○ Unfortunately, they don’t make you a superman
◎ Avoid changing them, unless you really want to
○ Non-standard shortcuts can make it frustrating to work
with a coworker’s PC or one at the library

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Inside the
keyboard
“Rubber dome” and “mechanical” switches
are the most common

Many other types exist, including magnetic

and optical

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Will you take the blue or the red switch?

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Keyboard safety
◎ No keyboard is “best”, choose one you like
◎ Avoid keyboards that frustrate you - oddly or
inconsistently behaving keys, annoying sounds …
◎ Be attentive to how you feel, this is the key to prevent
injury –see Repetitive_strain_injury
◎ If something feels odd:
○ Change your own posture, raise or lower the chair
○ Change the location and angle of the keyboard. Try
moving it away from yourself
○ Take a break
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What happens when you press
a key?

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What goes over the wire – key
events
Pressing Control-V
# evtest /dev/evt4
Event: time 1717863909.946255, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 700e0
Event: time 1717863909.946255, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 29 (KEY_LEFTCTRL), value 1
Event: time 1717863909.946255, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1717863910.059252, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 70019
Event: time 1717863910.059252, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 47 (KEY_V), value 1
Event: time 1717863910.059252, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1717863910.156245, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 70019
Event: time 1717863910.156245, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 47 (KEY_V), value 0
Event: time 1717863910.156245, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1717863910.201254, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 700e0
Event: time 1717863910.201254, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 29 (KEY_LEFTCTRL), value 0
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Programmable keyboards and small
layouts
Example of a “60% keyboard”
It lacks the F1-F12, Arrow keys and many more
Fn + something is used instead. For example Fn+1 = F1
This translation is done on the keyboard, not by the OS like for other
modifiers

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Touch
Typing Mülheim, Germany c. 1910
A touch-typing class in a commercial school
Touch-typing
◎ Typing without looking at the keyboard, using
all fingers
◎ In 1888, Frank McGurrin, won a decisive victory
in a typing contest held in Cincinnati. The
results were displayed on the front pages of
many newspapers. McGurrin won $500 (about
$16k today) and popularized the new typing
method.

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Touch-typing, why learn it?
◎ I feel like I can "drive" a computer now.

◎ I don't actually have to think about the physical act of

typing and can instead think about what I am writing.

◎ Reducing the cognitive demand of typing to almost

nothing makes me feel a lot less tired at the end of a
working day.

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Touch-typing, how to learn
◎ Use ratatype.com or keybr.com to start
○ Optionally continue with entertrained.app
○ They free and work in the browser
◎ Practicing 'little and often' (15 -30 minutes a day)
works much better than an hour or more once a week.
If you practice regularly and don't give up, you should
be able to learn to touch type fluently in 2-3 months
◎ Typing subreddit - reddit.com/r/typing

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Touch-typing
◎ Typing subreddit - reddit.com/r/typing
◎ Subreddit guide - Gary Internet's Typing Guide v12

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ratatype.com
TEXT
EDITORS
>
What software do
you use to edit text?
Word Processors (MS Word) vs Text Editors
(Notepad)

◎ The most Notepad

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IDEs vs Editors
◎ IDE = Integrated Development
Environment
◎ An IDE includes an editor + many
other tools integrated into it
WebStorm ⬆ ⬇ Turbo C++ (1990s)
◎ IDEs are often language specific
○ WebStorm for – HTML, CSS,
JavaScript
○ PyCharm for Python
○ Android Studio for Android apps

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Text-mode editors
are still alive and
popular
◎ Vi vs. Emacs – a source of
flamewars since 1976
◎ Appeared long before the
mouse and had to rely on
keyboard only
◎ Vim is pre-installed on many
Linux and MacOS by default
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Exiting Vim
If you do want to learn using
Vim:
◎ reddit.com/r/vim
◎ vim-adventures.com

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◎ Microsoft VSCode ≠ Visual Studio
◎ By far the most popular editor/IDE lately
◎ First released in 2015 – one of the younger editors
◎ Lots of extensions created by other people
◎ Available online in multiplayer collaboration mode
◎ vscode.dev
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Lab prep – GitHub pages

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Searching
Ctrl-F, Ctrl-Shift-F, Ctrl-H
Let’s look the details of these dialogs. What do all the options
mean?

PowerPoint VS Code
How to look for approximate
pattern?
◎ Say we want to search for
◎ “Student ID” followed by some digits?
◎ Or “<h1>” to “<h6>” with any number

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*.txt
◎ You might have seen search patterns like *.txt when
looking for files with a specific extension

◎ Demo

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Wildcard characters
“Wild card” - a playing card that can
have any value in a game

COMPUTING
a character that will match any
character or sequence of characters
in a search

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RegEx – regular expressions

◎ A whole language for creating search patterns

◎ Cryptic and confusing, but you only need the basics
◎ The basics:
○ . matches any character
○ [abc] – matches any of the listed characters
○ [a-z] – matches any lower-case letter
○ [0-9] – matches any digit, so does \d
○ Demo in the editor

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What will the following regexps
match?
◎ <h1>
◎ <h.>
◎ <h[1-6]>
◎ p[io]ng
◎ CAD[0-9]+
◎ CAD\d+
◎ [a-z]+\.com
◎ 192\.168\.1\.\d{1,3}
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Regex for an email address

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Questions?

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Links
• Subreddit about keyboard typing - reddit.com/r/typing
• Gary Internet's Typing Guide v12
• Fireship
• Fireship, 10 editors
• VS Code in 100 Seconds
• Regular Expressions (RegEx) in 100 Seconds
• Vim – article, video on how to start
• Frank_McGurrin – popularized touch-typing in 1880s
• Regular Expressions – Computerphile (alternative explanation)

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DRAFTS
File organization – directory
tree

◎ Files are just chunks of data on the disk

◎ Files have names and metadata like
creation date
◎ directories = folders
○ Intuitive organization
○ Help manage access permissions
○ Concept of “current directory” –
being “in a directory” is a lot like
being in a room in a big house
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