Count Each ASCII Character Occurance in a Given File

Ever get strange characters in a file and want to know what they are? Using this code you can see what characters would be causing the issue. The normal printing characters are ASCII 32 through 126, so any characters outside this range might be causing you trouble. Consult an online ASCII chart and look for the decimal values to verify the output from this tool.

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#!/usr/bin/env perl -w
#Script:  ord_frequency.pl
#Frequency of ASCII characters in file or standard input
#this can read from stdin or from a passed filename
#Reads file one character at a time in binary mode
#gets frequency of the ordinal value of each character.
#Display frequency distribution of ordinal values.
#----------------------------------------------------------
$file = shift;                          #optional file
$file = '-' unless defined $file;       #use STDIN if no file given
open FILE, "$file" or die $!;           #Open file
my %freq;
binmode FILE;                           #set binary mode
my ($buf, $data, $n);
while (($n = read FILE, $data, 1) != 0) {   #read 1 char at a time
   $freq{ord($data)}++;                 #record ordinal frequency
}
close(FILE);
#Display frequency Sorted Numerically by ordinal value
printf("%12i: %s\n", $freq{$_}, $_) foreach sort { $a <=> $b; } keys %freq;

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Enjoy!

Open Multiple Text Files With One Click using ActiveState Perl

This is a convenient way of opening many text files at once in an editor that supports multiple tabs.  For those that use a text editor for taking notes, logs, work files, journaling, etc. and often reference these files frequently this technique is very easy to use.

Requirements are:

• An editor that supports multiple files open at once in separate tabs.
• ActiveState Perl installed (and in your PATH)
• The sourcecode below
• setup a Windows Shortcut to the perl code

In the code below you will see that it is configured to open 4 files when "log.pl" runs. 
The files are:
YYYY_MM.txt (each month it will create a new file)
JOURNAL.txt
INFO.txt
TIPS.txt

You can change the names and the number of files you wish to open and the script will build the appropriate command line to run (see lines 20-23 below).

Make sure you specify the correct editor you are using... In this case it is using TextPad.exe, but it can use other editors if you specify the correct path to your editor (see line 14 below).

Source Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#Script : log.pl
#Purpose: To open multiple files at once in the editor that supports tabs
#Requirements: ActivePerl (in your path)
#Create a shortcut for this script
# Target: path to your script
# Start in: directory your script is in
use POSIX qw(strftime);

$scnt = 0; #string count
@strings = (); #array of strings
$cmd = ""; #command to run

$strings[$scnt++] = "C:\\Progra~1\\TextPa~1\\TextPad.exe"; #Use Textpad editor
#$strings[$scnt++] = "C:\\Progra~1\\EditPl~1\\editplus.exe"; #Use Editplus editor

#--------------------------------------------------------------------
# FILES YOU ENTER HERE WILL BE OPENED IN SEPARATE TABS IN YOUR EDITOR
#--------------------------------------------------------------------
$strings[$scnt++] = strftime("c:\\dir1\\notes\\%Y_%m.txt", localtime);
$strings[$scnt++] = "c:\\dir1\\notes\\JOURNAL.txt";
$strings[$scnt++] = "c:\\dir1\\notes\\INFO.txt";
$strings[$scnt++] = "c:\\dir1\\notes\\TIPS.txt";

foreach $str (@strings) { #Build Command string
$cmd .= chr(34) . $str . chr(34) . " ";
}

system ($cmd); #Open files in editor
  

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Enjoy!