Eric Stevens

Recent Blog Comments By Eric Stevens

• My First Look At The XML ENTITY Tag In ColdFusion XML Documents

  Posted on Sep 2, 2011 at 9:59 AM

  @David: this is likely not possible. Entities are just an encoding of (usually a single) character, and there are multiple ways to encode a given character. For example, the following are equivalent representations of the & character: & & &. The XML engine couldn't ho... read more »

• My First Look At The XML ENTITY Tag In ColdFusion XML Documents

  Posted on May 10, 2011 at 10:35 AM

  An entity can have any name you specify in an XML document. HTML entities (such as —) have a standard set of definitions. See Appendix A on http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-entities-961125 But you can do some neat things with this. For example, let's say you have a standard inline HTML ma... read more »

• cf.Objective() Photo Raffle With Me (Ben Nadel)

  Posted on May 14, 2009 at 3:52 PM

  I've been keeping my eyes open but haven't actually seen you yet!... read more »

• Ask Ben: Dynamically Executing ColdFusion Application.cfc Instances

  Posted on May 30, 2008 at 7:58 PM

  Could be the sub-application is compiled and you don't have access to the source. Anyway, I really saw it more of a brain teaser than anything, myself.... read more »

• Ask Ben: Dynamically Executing ColdFusion Application.cfc Instances

  Posted on May 30, 2008 at 1:21 PM

  Too lengthy for a comment, here's an alternate way to do something similar: http://www.bandeblog.com/2008/05/coldfusion-including-sub-applications/ Pay special attention to the caveats at the bottom!... read more »

• June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

  Posted on May 29, 2008 at 3:10 PM

  It's probably pretty obscure. I meant it as "I am the beginning and the end" or "I am the alpha and the omega"... read more »

• June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

  Posted on May 29, 2008 at 2:39 PM

  Another one: I am /(^).*($)/ Ack, that looks like a crazy Asian emoticon! Non-capturing sub-grouping is in order! In the spirit of http://xkcd.com/208/ : i =~ m/(^)(?:.*)($)/;... read more »

• June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

  Posted on May 28, 2008 at 12:41 PM

  @David: I hear you! I'm looking at YOU, Brian! =)... read more »

• June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

  Posted on May 28, 2008 at 11:50 AM

  @Dan: I don't think it's exactly the Java version, but I think that's probably what it's closest to. In reality it's not very likely you'll stumble upon the differences between them unless you're doing some reasonably advanced stuff anyway. Most people stick to capture grouping (...), non-captu... read more »

• June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

  Posted on May 28, 2008 at 11:22 AM

  Also, that shirt is cute, but it's always bothered me as it reads "2 B's or Not B twice" - Argh, urge to regex rising! This is better: /(?=bb)|(?!bb)/ Or if it needs to consume/capture (since (?=...) and (?!...) are non-consuming look-aheads): /(?:(?=bb)|(?!bb))(..)/ PLUS! maybe it should end... read more »

• June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

  Posted on May 28, 2008 at 11:11 AM

  The book "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl is the book which I would choose if I could keep only one. I wrote a review of it on my blog, but I feel like I try to plug myself too often here, so I won't link it - though it shouldn't be too hard to find if you follow the link on my nam... read more »

• Converting A ColdFusion Query To CSV Using QueryToCSV()

  Posted on May 22, 2008 at 11:16 AM

  I don't disagree =)... read more »

• Converting A ColdFusion Query To CSV Using QueryToCSV()

  Posted on May 22, 2008 at 10:43 AM

  @Misha Don't forget you have to escape any columns which might contain double quotes or line feeds.... read more »

• The ColdFusion Mail Spool Encountered An Invalid Spool File In The Spool Directory

  Posted on May 21, 2008 at 3:08 PM

  It looks like this is only a problem for mail with an attachment?... read more »

• Converting A ColdFusion Query To CSV Using QueryToCSV()

  Posted on May 21, 2008 at 2:03 PM

  @Jim & @Ben I did some tests of my own to compare various loop types for performance. In short: <cfloop array> is the fastest object loop I could find, with <cfloop list> being a close second. <cfloop collection> definitely didn't perform as well as these. I talk a bit about why... read more »

• Converting A ColdFusion Query To CSV Using QueryToCSV()

  Posted on May 21, 2008 at 10:13 AM

  @Steve Don't forget to include ";charset=utf-8" (CF's default output mode) to support non-ascii characters! Or else whatever charset you specified in <cfprocessingdirective> if you did so. <cfcontent type="text/plain; charset=utf-8">... read more »

• The Philosophy Of Undocumented ColdFusion Features

  Posted on May 16, 2008 at 1:07 PM

  @Todd: Do you really think that Adobe should be accountable for mentioning that linked hash table is going to be treated as a coldfusion struct? I don't. That's for the advanced developers / likes-to-dig-under-the-hood developers that quarrel on bennadel.com's website to sort out. I think you jus... read more »

• The Philosophy Of Undocumented ColdFusion Features

  Posted on May 16, 2008 at 12:40 PM

  @Ben: Any web developer who doesn't love regular expressions should consider either educating themselves or else a career change =) Plug: http://www.bandeblog.com/2008/03/book-review-mastering-regular-expressions-2nd-ed/... read more »

• The Philosophy Of Undocumented ColdFusion Features

  Posted on May 16, 2008 at 12:35 PM

  Using LinkedHashMap from ColdFusion as if it were a regular struct is documented? Anyway, it's beside my point, my point is that you can't say there exist no problems which have no documented solution and instead must rely on undocumented functionality or else face significant performance-sapping, ... read more »

• The Philosophy Of Undocumented ColdFusion Features

  Posted on May 16, 2008 at 12:15 PM

  @Ray: I don't agree that it's always possible to accomplish a goal through the use of only supported features. Consider my example: knowing which method of a CFC (or which UDF) caused an error. The best you could do is argue that it's difficult to come up with a case where this was a mandatory fe... read more »