Nifty Wikipedia Bash Script

Lets face it. At some point or the other most of us have used Wikipedia. But its a lengthy process firing the browser, typing the adress of the site, choosing the english Wikipedia and finally entering your query. All this and the countless images that get loaded which further slow down the process.

Well if you are more comfy with the terminal like me, all you do is use this script. I wrote this really simple script to save some time getting information from Wikipedia. Here are the install instructions -

>> Download wikip_v1.tar.gz

>> Extract all files to a temporary location (tar xvfz wikip_v1.tar.gz)

>> Go through the readme.txt file

>> Copy wikip to /usr/bin

>> Type wikip text_to_search

That’s all. Now isnt that a lot faster than using the traditional method

A dip in the cup of Bash scripting

Scripting is one of the most powerful tools of any Linux box. Tasks which require repetitive actions and seem to take forever to complete can be automated in a jiffy. The possibilities are endless. Since built in Linux commands can be used in shell scripts this opens up countless ways to write scripts. The three scripts that follow are basic examples to get you started. In the future I will be writing a tutorial on bash scripting. For now, im throwing a bit of source code in your face.

Java Swing example : celsius to farenheit converter

I’ve just started writing GUI programs in Java using AWT and Swing. This is a simple celsius to farenheit converter. Although the example is fairly simple it is a good introduction to GUI programming in Java.

Click here to download the source code for the application

Note – You need Linux or a program like WinRAR to extract the contents of the tarball