Multiple V-REP instances
1) Download V-REP
Download V-REP from the official webpage here. This guide is verified to work with v.3.6.2 and Ubuntu 18.04.
2) Extract
Extract the V-REP .zip file in the V-REP directory as many times as you need workers for your reinforcement learning algorithm (e.g., 4 times)
3) Make the V-REP directories unique
Go to the extracted directories (feel free to rename these). In remoteApiConnections.txt change portIndex1_port to something unique so they are not the same for any V-REP instance (e.g., 19995, 19996, 19997, 19998). Make a new file in all the extracted directories called simulationID.txt and write a unique ID (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4) (don’t use zero and don’t jump any numbers). The command for writing the ID’s are as follows:
Finally, copy and replace “libv_repExtRosInterface.so” from /home/mat/workspace/gorobots-mthor/utils/v-rep_simulations/v-rep_libs/reallib/libv_repExtRosInterface.so to the V-REP_# directory.


Build your ministerial capacity, cleric told - The Nation Newspaper
By Sunday Oguntola
Gospel ministers have been advised to build spiritual and relational capacity that will make them more effective in affecting lives.
The Chairman General of Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church (Ayo Ni O) Oko-Oba Lagos, Special Apostle Emmanuel Alogbo stated this last week in a chat with reporters.
He spoke ahead of the National Pastors Council Lagos/Ogun, which ends today in Lagos.
Alogbo said ministers have a responsibility to preach the truth at all times, knowing they will give account to God.
According to him: “We have to remember that God is watching us. We must deliver all the souls He has allocated to us.
“We cannot afford to be slack because the devil is always at work. The business of saving souls must be productive and profitable.”
Read Also: ‘Christians must play developmental politics’
Chairman of Lagos/Ogun Pastors Council, Pastor James Owolabi, urged ministers to make ministerial assignments the core of their lives.
He said when they handle God’s works well, God will have no choice than to make their issues his business.
Owolabi said: “Make the Shepherd work your work and the Chief Shepherd will make your life His project.”
He informed the workshop with the theme faith unto glory was designed to build the capacity of ministers in the church for greater exploits.


A Testing analysis engineer with hand-on
expereince in all level of testing such as
Performance,Strength of material,Noise
FFT analysis, and project control.
- Hand on Testing and analysis the steering
gear expereince
- CAT system and FFT analysis program


{% extends 'payments/base.html' %} {% block title %}QIIME - Workshops{% endblock %} {% block header %}Workshops{% endblock %} {% block content %}
See here for information on hosting or attending an official QIIME workshop.
| Title | Location | Workshop Dates |
|---|---|---|
| {{ workshop.title }} | {{ workshop.location }} | {{ workshop.start_date }} - {{ workshop.end_date }} |
No upcoming workshops
{% endif %} {% endblock %}


A Path to Web Development & Programming in General: WEEK TWO
Week one was good. A lot of enthusiasm could be seen from you guys. Even though things broke, computers, softwares, lack of coordination etc, the meet-up was quite good. The biggest take away from week one is that, first you crawl and then you walk, things will improve as we go on.
The goal of this week is to code your resume and host it online.
By the end of the week you will be familiar with:
I will cover the above aspects in a tutorial post within a couple of days. Till then, we all have decided to continue playing around with HTML5 & CSS3 until Wednesday to get our basics right. So for now, complete the Codecedemy’s Web Fundamental track and the Netuts HTML & CSS. Get on with it!
Incase the Nettuts videos are streaming, here’s an alternate source
“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
-Bruce Lee


Index
A
|
B
|
D
|
E
|
F
|
G
|
H
|
I
|
L
|
M
|
S
|
V
A
airspeed() (drone.Drone property)
arm() (drone.Drone method)
arm_and_takeoff() (drone.Drone method)
attitude() (drone.Drone property)
B
battery() (drone.Drone property)
D
disarm() (drone.Drone method)
drone
module
Drone (class in drone)
E
ekf_ok() (drone.Drone property)
F
flight_mode() (drone.Drone property)
flight_plan() (drone.Drone property)
G
gps_0() (drone.Drone property)
groundspeed() (drone.Drone property)
H
heading() (drone.Drone property)
I
is_armable() (drone.Drone property)
is_armed() (drone.Drone property)
L
location() (drone.Drone property)
M
MavlinkMessage (class in drone)
mission_read() (drone.Drone method)
mission_upload() (drone.Drone method)
module
drone
S
set_flight_mode() (drone.Drone method)
set_home() (drone.Drone method)
simple_goto() (drone.Drone method)
system_status() (drone.Drone property)
V
velocity() (drone.Drone property)
prokura-mav
Navigation
Related Topics
Documentation overview
Quick search


?PLANTS
OF
BAHAMA
ISLANDS
Maurandella
antirrhiniflora
(H.
¤
B.
ex
Willd.)
Rothm.
Eleuthera:
just
north
of
Rock
Sound
Airport,
beneath
Casuarina
trees.
Vine
with
lavender
flowers.
August
11,
1977
D.S.Correll
¤
h.B.
Correll
48924
Herbarium
FAIRCHILD
TROPICAL
GARDEN
7*
<
01334601
Legend -
Level of confidence that token is an accurately-transcribed word
extremely low
very low
low
undetermined
medium
high
very high


Maintenance, service and repair
Many jobs in this family involve fixing things and understanding how machines work. These jobs could interest you if you like working with your hands and solving problems.
- Aerospace engineer
- Aerospace engineering technician
- Agricultural contractor
- Agricultural engineering technician
- Audio visual technician
- Auto electrician
- Boat builder
- Building services engineer
- Caretaker
- Cellar technician
- Chemical engineering technician
- Chimney sweep
- Construction plant mechanic
- Critical care technologist
- Cycle mechanic
- Diver
- Domestic appliance service engineer
- Education technician
- Electrical engineer
- Electrical engineering technician
- Electrician
- Electricity distribution worker
- Electricity generation worker
- Electronics engineer
- Electronics engineering technician
- Engineering maintenance technician
- Farrier
- Forklift truck engineer
- Garage manager
- Gas mains layer
- Gas service technician
- Glazier
- Handyperson
- Heating and ventilation engineer
- Helicopter engineer
- IT service engineer
- Leakage operative
- Lift engineer
- Lighting technician
- Lock keeper
- Locksmith
- Maintenance fitter
- Marine engineer
- Marine engineering technician
- Materials technician
- Mechanical engineering technician
- Motor mechanic
- Motor vehicle breakdown engineer
- Motor vehicle fitter
- Musical instrument maker and repairer
- Non-destructive testing technician
- Office equipment service technician
- Plumber
- Rail engineering technician
- Rail track maintenance worker
- Recycling operative
- Refrigeration and air-conditioning installer
- Road worker
- Satellite engineer
- Security systems installer
- Shoe repairer
- Signalling technician
- Sterile services technician
- Swimming pool technician
- Telecoms engineer
- Textile machinery technician
- Thatcher
- Thermal insulation engineer
- Upholsterer
- Vehicle body repairer
- Vending machine operator
- Watch or clock repairer
- Water network operative
- Water treatment worker
- Welder
- Window fitter
- Windscreen fitter


PAM_TALLY2
Section: Linux\-PAM Manual (8)Updated: 06/16/2009
Index Return to Main Contents
pam_tally2 - The login counter (tallying) module
Synopsis
-
pam_tally2.so [file=/path/to/counter] [onerr=[fail|succeed]] [magic_root] [even_deny_root] [deny=n] [lock_time=n] [unlock_time=n] [root_unlock_time=n] [serialize] [audit] [silent] [no_log_info]
- pam_tally2 [--file /path/to/counter] [--user username] [--reset[=n]] [--quiet]
DESCRIPTION
pam_tally2 comes in two parts: pam_tally2.so and pam_tally2. The former is the PAM module and the latter, a stand-alone program. pam_tally2 is an (optional) application which can be used to interrogate and manipulate the counter file. It can display users' counts, set individual counts, or clear all counts. Setting artificially high counts may be useful for blocking users without changing their passwords. For example, one might find it useful to clear all counts every midnight from a cron job.
Normally, failed attempts to access root will not cause the root account to become blocked, to prevent denial-of-service: if your users aren't given shell accounts and root may only login via su or at the machine console (not telnet/rsh, etc), this is safe.
OPTIONS
GLOBAL OPTIONS
-
This can be used for
auth
and
account
module types.
onerr=[fail|succeed]
- If something weird happens (like unable to open the file), return with PAM_SUCCESS if onerr=succeed is given, else with the corresponding PAM error code.
file=/path/to/counter
- File where to keep counts. Default is FC/var/log/tallylogF[].
audit
- Will log the user name into the system log if the user is not found.
silent
- Don't print informative messages.
no_log_info
- Don't log informative messages via syslog(3).
AUTH OPTIONS
-
Authentication phase first increments attempted login counter and checks if user should be denied access. If the user is authenticated and the login process continues on call to
pam_setcred(3)
it resets the attempts counter.
deny=n
- Deny access if tally for this user exceeds n.
lock_time=n
- Always deny for n seconds after failed attempt.
unlock_time=n
- Allow access after n seconds after failed attempt. If this option is used the user will be locked out for the specified amount of time after he exceeded his maximum allowed attempts. Otherwise the account is locked until the lock is removed by a manual intervention of the system administrator.
magic_root
- If the module is invoked by a user with uid=0 the counter is not incremented. The sysadmin should use this for user launched services, like su, otherwise this argument should be omitted.
no_lock_time
- Do not use the .fail_locktime field in FC/var/log/faillogF[] for this user.
even_deny_root
- Root account can become unavailable.
root_unlock_time=n
- This option implies even_deny_root option. Allow access after n seconds to root account after failed attempt. If this option is used the root user will be locked out for the specified amount of time after he exceeded his maximum allowed attempts.
serialize
- Serialize access to the tally file using locks. This option might be used only for non-multithreaded services because it depends on the fcntl locking of the tally file. Also it is a good idea to use this option only in such configurations where the time between auth phase and account or setcred phase is not dependent on the authenticating client. Otherwise the authenticating client will be able to prevent simultaneous authentications by the same user by simply artificially prolonging the time the file record lock is held.
ACCOUNT OPTIONS
-
Account phase resets attempts counter if the user is
not
magic root. This phase can be used optionally for services which don't call
pam_setcred(3)
correctly or if the reset should be done regardless of the failure of the account phase of other modules.
magic_root
- If the module is invoked by a user with uid=0 the counter is not changed. The sysadmin should use this for user launched services, like su, otherwise this argument should be omitted.
MODULE TYPES PROVIDED
The auth and account module types are provided.
RETURN VALUES
PAM_AUTH_ERR
- A invalid option was given, the module was not able to retrieve the user name, no valid counter file was found, or too many failed logins.
PAM_SUCCESS
- Everything was successful.
PAM_USER_UNKNOWN
- User not known.
NOTES
pam_tally2 is not compatible with the old pam_tally faillog file format. This is caused by requirement of compatibility of the tallylog file format between 32bit and 64bit architectures on multiarch systems.
There is no setuid wrapper for access to the data file such as when the pam_tally2.so module is called from xscreensaver. As this would make it impossible to share PAM configuration with such services the following workaround is used: If the data file cannot be opened because of insufficient permissions (EACCES) the module returns PAM_IGNORE.
EXAMPLES
Add the following line to FC/etc/pam.d/loginF[] to lock the account after 4 failed logins. Root account will be locked as well. The accounts will be automatically unlocked after 20 minutes. The module does not have to be called in the account phase because the login calls pam_setcred(3) correctly.
-
auth required pam_securetty.so auth required pam_tally2.so deny=4 even_deny_root unlock_time=1200 auth required pam_env.so auth required pam_unix.so auth required pam_nologin.so account required pam_unix.so password required pam_unix.so session required pam_limits.so session required pam_unix.so session required pam_lastlog.so nowtmp session optional pam_mail.so standard
FILES
FC/var/log/tallylogF[]
- failure count logging file
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR
pam_tally2 was written by Tim Baverstock and Tomas Mraz.
Index
- Synopsis
- DESCRIPTION
- OPTIONS
- MODULE TYPES PROVIDED
- RETURN VALUES
- NOTES
- EXAMPLES
- FILES
- SEE ALSO
- AUTHOR
This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 05:34:28 GMT, December 24, 2015


The Golden Stag lived up to its name in most ways. Polished tables and benches with rose-carved legs dotted the large common room.  Blue-and-gold scrollwork made a broad painted band on the plaster walls just below the high beamed ceiling. The fireplaces were well-dressed stone, their hearths decorated with a few evergreen branches, and a stag chiseled above each lintel supporting a winecup in branching antlers. A tall clock with a little gilding stood on one mantel. A knot of musicians played on a small dais at the back, two perspiring men in their shirtsleeves with keening flutes, a pair plucking nine-string bitterns, and a red-faced woman in a blue-striped dress working tiny wooden hammers across a dulcimer on thin legs. More than a dozen serving maids scurried in and out, stepping quickly in their aprons and pale blue dresses. Most were pretty, though some carried nearly as many years as Mistress Daelvin, the round little innkeeper with her wispy gray bun at the nape of her neck. Just the sort of place Mat liked; it fairly oozed comfort and an air of money. He had chosen it because it sat nearly dead center in the town, but the other had not hurt.
Not everything fitted the second-best inn in Maerone, of course. The smells from the kitchen were mutton and turnips again, and the inevitable spicy barley soup, and they mingled with the smell of dust and horses from outside. Well, food was a problem in a town jammed with refugees and soldiers, and more in camps all around it. Men’s voices singing raucous marching songs came and went in the street, the sounds of boots and horses’ hooves and men cursing the heat. The common room was hot, too, without a breath of air stirring; had the windows been swung out, dust would soon have coated everything inside, and it still would not have done much for the heat inside. Maerone was a griddle.
As far as Mat could see, the whole bloody world was drying up, and he did not want to think about why. He wished he could forget the heat, forget why he was in Maerone, forget everything. His good green coat, gold-embroidered on collar and cuffs, was undone, his fine linen shirt unlaced, yet he still sweated like a horse. It might have helped to remove the black silk scarf looped around his neck, but he seldom did where anyone could see. Draining the last of his wine, he set the burnished pewter cup on the table at his elbow and picked up his broad-brimmed hat to fan himself. Whatever he drank no sooner went in than he sweated it out.
When he chose to stay at the Golden Stag, the lords and officers of the Band of the Red Hand followed his lead, which meant all others stayed clear. That usually did not displease Mistress Daelvin. She could have rented out every bed five times over just among the lords and lordlings of the Band, and that sort paid well, had few fights and usually took them outside before spilling blood. This midday, however, only nine or ten men occupied the tables, and she occasionally blinked at the empty benches, patted at her bun and sighed; she would not sell much wine before evening. A large part of her profits came from wine. The musicians played vigorously, though.
Unfortunately for the musicians’ purses, Mat was the only man listening, and he winced at every third note. It really was not their fault; the music sounded fine if you did not know what you were listening to. Mat did—he had taught it to them, clapping the beat and humming—but no one else had heard that tune in more than two thousand years. The best to be said was that they had the rhythms right.
A bit of conversation caught his ear. Tossing his hat down, he waved his cup to signal for more wine and leaned across his table toward the three men drinking around the next. “What was that?”
“We are trying to figure out how to win some of our money back from you,” Talmanes said, unsmiling over his winecup. He was not upset. Only a few years older than Mat’s twenty, and a head shorter, Talmanes seldom smiled. The man always made Mat think of a compressed spring. “No one can beat you at cards.” The commander of half the Band’s cavalry, he was a lord here in Cairhien, but the front of his head was shaved and powdered, though sweat had washed some of it away. A good many younger Cairhienin lords had taken up soldiers’ styles. Talmanes’ coat was plain, too, without a noble’s slashes of color, although he was entitled to quite a few.
“Not so,” Mat protested. True, when his luck was in, it was perfect, but it ran in cycles, especially with things that had as much order as a deck of cards. “Blood and ashes! You won fifty crowns from me last week.” Fifty crowns; a year or so ago, he would have turned backflips at winning one crown, and wept at the thought of losing one. A year or so ago, he had not had one to lose.
“How many hundred behind does that leave me?” Talmanes asked dryly. “I want a chance to win some back.” If he ever did start winning against Mat with any consistency, he would start worrying too. Like most of the Band, he took Mat’s luck as a talisman.
 Commander of the Band’s foot, he drank thirstily and ignored a grimace only half-hidden behind Nalesean’s oiled beard. Most nobles Mat had met thought dice common, fit only for peasants. “I have never seen you end the day behind at dice. It has to be something you have no control over, no hand in, if you understand.”
Just a little taller than his fellow Cairhienin Talmanes, Daerid was a good fifteen years older, his nose broken more than once and three white scars crisscrossing his face.
“We thought horses,” Nalesean put in, gesturing with his pewter cup. A blocky man, taller than either of the Cairhienin, he led the other half of the cavalry in the Band. Given the heat, Mat often wondered why he kept his luxuriant black beard, but he trimmed it every morning to keep the point sharp. And where Daerid and Talmanes wore their plain gray coats hanging open, Nalesean had his—green silk with those padded Tairen sleeves striped and cuffed in gold satin—buttoned to the neck. His face glistened with sweat that he ignored. “Burn my soul, but your luck holds hard with battle and cards. And dice,” he added with another grimace at Daerid. “But in horse racing, it’s all the horse.”
Mat smiled and propped his elbows on the table. “Find yourself a good horse, and we’ll see.” His luck might not affect a horse race—aside from dice and cards and the like, he could never be sure what it would touch or when—but he had grown up watching his father trade horseflesh, and his own eye for a horse was fairly sharp.
“Do you want this wine, or not? I cannot pour it if I cannot reach your cup.”
Mat glanced over his shoulder.  And that precise, musical Cairhienin accent made her voice into chimes. He had had his eye on Betse Silvin since the first day he walked into the Golden Stag, but this was his first chance to speak to her; there were always five things that needed doing immediately and ten that should have been done yesterday. The other men had already buried their faces in their wine, leaving him as alone with the woman as they could without walking out. They had manners, even the two nobles.
Grinning, Mat swung his legs over the bench and held out his cup for her to fill. “Thank you, Betse,” he said, and she bobbed a curtsy. When he asked her to pour one for herself and join him, however, she set the pitcher on the table, folded her arms and tilted her head to one side, eyeing him up and down.
“I hardly think Mistress Daelvin would like that. Oh, no, I do not think she would. Are you a lord? They all seem to jump for you, but no one calls you ‘my Lord.’ They barely even bow; just the commoners.”
Mat’s eyebrows shot up. “No,” he said, more curtly than he wished, “I am not a lord.” Rand could let people run around calling him Lord Dragon and the like, but that was not for Matrim Cauthon. No, indeed.  Some women tried to nudge a man off balance, but it was a dance he was good at. “Just call me Mat, Betse. I’m sure Mistress Daelvin won’t mind if you just sit with me.”
“Oh, yes, she would. But I suppose I can talk a bit; you must be almost a lord. Why are you wearing that in this heat?” Leaning forward, she pushed his scarf down with a finger. He had not been paying attention, and had let it slip, a little. “What is this?” She ran her finger along the pale thickened ridge that circled his neck. “Did someone try to hang you? Why?  He pulled his head back and hastily retied the black silk to hide his scar, but Betse was not put off.  “Was it for stealing this? It looks valuable; is it valuable?” Mat snatched the medallion away, stuffed it back where it belonged. The woman hardly drew breath, certainly not enough for him to get a word in. He heard Nalesean and Daerid chuckling behind him, and his face darkened. Sometimes his luck with gambling was stood on its head with women, and they always found it funny. “No, they would not have let you keep it if you stole it, would they?” Betse chattered on. “And if you are almost a lord, I suppose you can own things like that. Perhaps it was because you knew too much. You look a young man who knows a great deal. Or thinks he does.” She smiled one of those shrewd little smiles that women wore when they wanted to fuddle a man. It seldom meant they knew anything, but they could make you think they did. “Did they try to hang you for thinking you knew too much? Or was it for pretending to be a lord? Are you sure you are not a lord?”
Daerid and Nalesean were laughing right out, now, and even Talmanes was chuckling, though they tried to pretend it was about something else. Daerid wheezingly interjected some tale about a man falling off a horse whenever he had breath enough, but there was nothing funny in the bits Mat heard.
He kept his grin on, though. He was not going to be routed even if she could talk faster than he could run. She was very pretty, and he had spent the last few weeks talking to the likes of Daerid and worse, sweaty men who sometimes forgot to shave and too often had no chance to bathe. Perspiration beaded Betse’s cheeks, but she gave off a faint smell of lavender-scented soap. “Actually, I got that scratch for knowing too little,” he said lightly. Women always liked it when you played down your scars; the Light knew he was growing enough of them. “I know too much now, but too little then. You could say I was hanged for knowledge.”
Shaking her head, Betse pursed her lips. “That sounds like it is supposed to be witty, Mat. Lordlings say witty things all the time, but you say you are not a lord. Besides, I am a simple woman; wit goes right over my head. I think simple words are best.  No woman likes a man pretending to be what he is not. Maybe you could explain what you were trying to say?”
Maintaining his smile was an effort. Bandying words with her was not going at all the way he wanted. He could not tell whether she was a complete nit or just managing to make him trip over his ears trying to keep up. Either way, she was still pretty, and she still smelled of lavender, not sweat. Daerid and Nalesean seemed to be choking to death. Talmanes was humming “A Frog on the Ice.” So he was skidding about with his feet in the air, was he?
Mat put down his winecup and rose, bowing over Betse’s hand. “I am who I am and no more, but your face drives words right out my head.” That made her blink; whatever they said, women always like flowery talk. “Will you dance?”
Not waiting for an answer, he led her toward where a clear floor stretched the length of the common room through the tables. With luck, dancing would slow her tongue a little, and he was lucky, after all. Besides, he had never heard of a woman whose heart was not softened by dancing. Dance with her, and she will forgive much; dance well, and she will forgive anything. That was a very old saying. Very old.
Betse hung back, biting her lip and looking for Mistress Daelvin, but the plump little innkeeper only smiled and waved Betse on, then patted ineffectually at the tendrils escaping her bun and went back to chivvying the other serving maids as though the tables were full. Mistress Daelvin would have been all over any man she thought was behaving improperly—despite her placid appearance, she kept a short cudgel in her skirts and sometimes used it; Nalesean still eyed her carefully when she came close—but if a free-spending man wanted a dance, what was the harm in that? He held Betse’s hands outstretched to either side. There should be just enough room between the tables. The musicians began to play louder, if no better.
“Follow me,” he told her. “The steps are simple to start.” In time to the music he began, dip and a gliding sidestep to the right, left foot sliding after. Dip and a gliding step and slide, with arms outstretched.
Betse caught on quickly, and she was light on her feet. When they reached the musicians, he smoothly lifted her hands overhead and spun himself and her back to back. Then it was dip and sidestep, twirl face-to-face, dip, sidestep and twirl, again and again, all the way back to where they began. She fell into that just as swiftly, smiling up at him in delight whenever the turns allowed. She truly was pretty.
“A little more complicated now,” he murmured, turning so they faced the musicians side by side, wrists crossed and hands linked in front of them. Right knee up, slight kick left, then glide forward and right. Left knee up, slight kick right, then glide forward and left. Betse laughed as they wove their way to the performers once more. The steps became more intricate with each passage, but she needed only one demonstration to match him, light as a feather in his hands with each twist and turn and spin. Best of all, she did not say a word.
The music caught him up, missed notes and all, and the pattern dance, and memories floated in his head as they floated back and forth across the floor. In memory he was a head taller, with long golden mustaches and blue eyes. He wore a red-sashed coat of amber silk with a ruff of finest Barsine lace and yellow sapphire studs from Aramaelle on his chest, and he danced with a darkly beautiful emissary of the Atha’an Miere, the Sea Folk. The fine gold chain linking her nose ring to one of her multitude of earrings held tiny medallions that identified her as Wavemistress of Clan Shodin. He did not care how powerful she was; that was for the king to worry over, not a middling lord. She was beautiful and light in his arms, and they danced beneath the great crystal dome at the court of Shaemal, when all the world envied Coremanda’s splendor and might. Other memories flitted around the edges, sparking off bits of that remembered dance. The morrow would bring news of increasingly heavy Trolloc raids out of the Great Blight, and another month word that Barsine of the golden spires had been ravaged and burned and the Trolloc hordes were sweeping south. So would begin what later would be called the Trolloc Wars, though none gave it that name to begin, three hundred years and more of all but unbroken battle, blood, fire and ruin before the Trollocs were driven back, the Dreadlords hunted down. So would begin the fall of Coremanda, with all its wealth and power, and Essenia, with its philosophers and famed seats of learning, of Manetheren and Eharon and all of the Ten Nations, smashed even in victory to rubble from which other lands would rise, lands that barely remembered the Ten Nations as more than myths of a happier time. But that lay ahead, and he banished those memories in the pleasure of this one. Tonight he danced the pattern dance with . . .
He blinked, for an instant startled by sunlight streaming through the windows and the fair face beaming up at him through a sheen of perspiration. Very nearly he fumbled the complex interweaving of his feet with Betse’s as they whirled down the floor, but he caught himself before tripping her, the steps coming instinctively. This dance was his as surely as those memories were, borrowed or stolen, but so seamlessly woven into those he really had lived that he could no longer tell the difference without thinking. All his, now, filling holes in his own memories; he might as well have lived them all.
It had been true, what he told her about the scar on his neck. Hanged for knowledge, and for lack of it.  Well, almost as simple. The results only hardened his mistrust of anything to do with the One Power. The first time he had been told he was fated to die and live again, among other things he did not want to hear. Some of those other things had set him on the path to his second journey through a ter’angreal, and that had led to him having a rope tied around his neck.
A series of steps, each taken for good cause or pure necessity, each seeming so reasonable at the time, and each leading to things he had never imagined. He always seemed to find himself caught in that sort of dance. He had been dead for sure until Rand cut him down and revived him. For the hundredth time he remade a promise to himself. From now on he was going to watch where he put his feet. No more jumping into things without thinking what might come of it.
In truth, he had gained more than the scar that day. The silver foxhead for one, its single eye shaded to look like the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai. Sometimes he laughed so hard over that medallion that his ribs hurt. He did not trust any Aes Sedai, so he even bathed and slept with the thing around his neck. The world was a funny place—funny peculiar, usually.
Another gain really had been knowledge, if unwanted knowledge. Slices of other men’s lives packed his head now, thousands of them, sometimes only a few hours, sometimes years altogether though in patches, memories of courts and combats stretching for well over a thousand years, from long before the Trolloc Wars to the final battle of Artur Hawkwing’s rise. All his now, or they might as well be.
Nalesean and Daerid and Talmanes were clapping to the music, and the other men scattered around the tables too. Men of the Band of the Red Hand, urging their commander on in his dance. Light but that name made Mat cringe inside. It had belonged to a legendary band of heroes who died trying to save Manetheren. Not a man who rode or marched behind the Band’s banner but thought they would end up in the legends too. Mistress Daelvin was clapping as well, and the rest of the maids had stopped to watch.
Those other men’s memories were why the Band followed Mat, though they did not know. Because his head held memories of more battles and campaigns than a hundred men could have faced. Whether he had been on the winning side or the losing, he remembered how those battles were won or lost, and it took only a little wit to translate that into winning for the Band. So far it had, at least. When he could find no way to avoid the fighting.
More than once he had wished those bits of other men were out of his head.  He was no hero, and did not want to be one. Heroes had a bad habit of getting killed. When you were a hero, it was toss the dog a bone and shove him into a corner out of the way, unless it was promise the dog a bone and send him out to hunt again. The same for soldiers, for that matter.
On the other hand, without those memories he would not have six thousand soldiers around him. He would stand alone, ta’veren and tied to the Dragon Reborn, a naked target and known to the Forsaken. Some of them apparently knew entirely too much about Mat Cauthon. Moiraine had claimed he was important, that maybe Rand needed him and Perrin both to win the Last Battle. If she had been right, he would do what he had to—he would; he just had to get used to the idea—but he was not about to be a bloody hero. If he could just figure out what to do about the bloody Horn of Valere . . . offering up a small prayer for Moiraine’s soul, he hoped she had been wrong.
He and Betse reached the end of the clear space for the final time, and she collapsed against his chest laughing when he stopped. “Oh, that was wonderful. I felt like I was in a royal palace somewhere. Can we do it again? Oh, can we? Can we?” Mistress Daelvin applauded for a moment, then realized the other serving maids were standing about and rounded on them, sending them scurrying like chickens with vigorous waves of her arms.
“Does ‘Daughter of the Nine Moons’ mean anything to you?” The words just popped out. It was thinking about those ter’angreal that did it. Wherever he found the Daughter of the Nine Moons—Please, Light, let it be a long time yet! It was a fervent thought—wherever he found her, it would not be serving table at a small-town inn crammed full of soldiers and refugees. Then again, who could say when it came to prophecy? It had been prophecy, in a way. To die and live again. To marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. To give up half the light of the world to save the world, whatever that meant. He had died, after all, swinging on that rope. If that was true, the rest had to be. No way out of that.
“Daughter of the Nine Moons?” Betse said breathlessly. Lack of breath did not slow her down. “Is it an inn? A tavern? Not here in Maerone, I know that. Maybe across the river in Aringill? I have never been to—”
Mat laid a finger across her lips. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s dance another dance.” A country dance this time; something from the here and now, with no memories but his attached to it. Only, he really did have to think to tell them apart now.
A throat clearing made him glance over his shoulder, and he sighed at the sight of Edorion standing in the doorway, steel-backed gauntlets tucked behind his sword belt and helmet beneath his arm. The young Tairen lord had been a plump, pink-cheeked man when Mat gambled with him in the Stone of Tear, but he had grown harder and sun-dark since coming north. The rimmed helmet bore no plumes now, and chips and dents marred the once ornate gilding on his breastplate. His puffy-sleeved coat was blue striped with black, but showing wear.
“You told me to remind you of your rounds at this hour.” Edorion coughed into his fist; he ostentatiously did not glance at Betse. “But I could come back later if you wish.”
“I’ll come now,” Mat told him. It was important to make rounds every day, inspect something different every day; those other men’s memories told him that, and he had come to trust them about things like this. If he was stuck in this job, he might as well try to do it right. Doing it right might keep him alive. Besides, Betse had drawn away from him and was trying to pat sweat from her face with her apron and straighten her hair at the same time. The euphoria was fading from her face. It did not matter. She would remember. Dance well with a woman, he thought smugly, and she’s halfway yours.
“Give these to the musicians,” he told her, folding three gold marks into her hand. However badly they had played, for a time the tune had taken him away from Maerone and the immediate future. Anyway, women liked generosity. This was going very well. With a bow, just short of kissing her hand, he added, “Until later, Betse. We’ll dance again when I come back.”
To his surprise, she waggled a finger under his nose and gave an admonitory shake of her head as if she had read his mind. Well, he had never claimed to understand women.
Settling his hat on his head, he took up his black-hafted spear from beside the door. That was another gift from the other side of that ter’angreal, with its inscription of the shaft in the Old Tongue and its odd head like a short sword blade marked with two ravens.
“We’ll do the drinking rooms today,” he told Edorion, and they strode out into the full heat of midday, into the bedlam of Maerone.
It was a small, unwalled town, though fifty times larger than anything he had seen before leaving the Two Rivers. An overgrown village, really, few of the brick and stone buildings more than a single story high and only the inns rising as much as three, with as many roofs of wooden shingles or thatch as slate or tile. Now the streets, most hard-packed dirt, were thronged with people. The townsfolk were of every sort, mainly Cairhienin and Andorans. Although it lay on the Cairhienin side of the Erinin, Maerone was in no nation now, but balanced between, with folk from half a dozen lands living there or passing through. There had even been three or four Aes Sedai since Mat arrived. Even wearing the medallion he walked wide of them—no need to seek out trouble—but they all moved on as quickly as they came. His luck did run good when it was important. So far it had.
The townspeople hurried about their business, for the most part ignoring the many ragged men, women and children who wandered about blankly. All Cairhienin, those last usually found their way down to the river before returning to the refugee camps ringing the town. Few left to go home, though. The civil war might be over up in Cairhien, but there were still brigands, and they feared the Aiel. For all Mat knew, they feared running into the Dragon Reborn. The simple truth of it was they had run as far as they could; none had energy remaining for much beyond those trips to the river to stare at Andor.
The Band’s soldiers added to the crowds, ones or threes meandering about the shops and taverns, troops in formation, crossbowmen and archers in jerkins covered with steel discs, pikemen in battered breastplates cast off by their betters or looted from the dead. Everywhere rode breast-plated horsemen, Tairen lancers in rimmed helmets and Cairhienin in bell-shaped helmets, even some Andorans in conical helmets with barred face-guards. Rahvin had tossed a good many men out of the Queen’s Guards, men too loyal to Morgase, and some had joined the Band. Hawkers wove through the mass with their trays, crying needles and thread, ointments claimed to be good for any wound and remedies for everything from blisters to watery bowels to camp fever, soap, tin pots and cups guaranteed not to rust out, woolen stockings, knives and daggers of the finest Andoran steel—the seller’s word on it—every sort of thing that a soldier might need or the vendors thought he might be convinced he did. The din was such that any hawkers’ bellows were swallowed up three paces away.
The soldiers recognized Mat right away, of course, and many raised cheers, even men too far away to see more than his broad-brimmed hat and odd spear. Those picked him out as clearly as any noble’s sigil. He had heard all the rumors about why he disdained armor and helmet; there were all sorts, from mad bravery to the claim that only a weapon forged by the Dark One himself could kill him. Some said the hat had been given him by Aes Sedai, and as long as he wore it nothing could kill him. The fact was it was an ordinary hat, and he wore it because it gave good shade. And because it was a good reminder to stay clear of anywhere he might need helmet and armor. The tales circulating about his spear, with that inscription that few even among the nobles could read, were more extravagant still. None could match the truth, though. That raven-marked blade had been made by Aes Sedai during the War of the Shadow, before the Breaking; it never needed sharpening, and he doubted he could break it if he tried.
Waving to acknowledge shouts of “The Light illumine Lord Matrim!” and “Lord Matrim and victory!” and such drivel, he made his way through the crowds with Edorion. At least he did not have to push; they gave way as soon as they saw him. He wished so many of the refugees did not stare as though he had the key to their hopes hidden in his pocket. Aside from making sure they got food from the wagon trains coming up from Tear, he did not know what he could do. A good many were dirty as well as ragged.
“Did the soap get out to the camps?” he muttered.
Edorion heard despite the uproar. “It did. Most trade it back to the peddlers for cheap wine. They don’t want soap; they want to cross the river, or else drown their miseries.”
Mat grunted sourly. Passage to Aringill was one thing he could not give them.
Until civil war and worse tore Cairhien apart, Maerone had been a transit point for trade between Cairhien and Tear, which meant it had almost as many inns and taverns as it did houses. The first five he poked his nose into varied little, from The Fox and Goose to The Wagoner’s Whip, stone buildings with packed tables and the occasional budding fistfight, which Mat ignored. No one was drunk, though.
The River Gate, all the way across town, had been Maerone’s best inn, but heavy planks nailed across its sun-carved doors served as a reminder to the innkeepers and tapsters not to get the Band’s soldiers drunk. Still, even sober soldiers fought, Tairen against Cairhienin against Andoran, foot against horse, one lord’s men against another’s, veterans against new recruits, soldiers against civilians. Fights were quelled before they got out of hand, though, by soldiers carrying cudgels and wearing red armbands that stretched from wrist to elbow. Each unit had to take its turn providing Redarms, different men every day, and the Redarms had to pay for any damage the day they were on duty. It made them industrious in keeping the peace.
At The Fox and Goose a gleeman was juggling flaming batons, a stout man in his middle years, while another, a skinny balding fellow at The Erinin Inn, had his harp in hand and declaimed part of The Great Hunt of the Horn. Despite the heat each wore his distinctive cloak, all covered with patches in a hundred colors that fluttered when he moved; a gleeman would give up a hand before that cloak. They had fairly attentive audiences—many of the onlookers came from villages that eagerly greeted a gleeman’s visit—more so than the girl singing on a table in a tavern called The Three Towers. She was pretty enough, with her long dark curls, but a song about true love was not likely to interest the raucously laughing men drinking there. The remaining places had no entertainment beyond a musician or two, yet the crowds were louder still, and dice games at half the tables made Mat’s fingers twitch. But he really did almost always win, at least with dice, and it would not be right to take coin from his own soldiers. That was what most of the men at the tables were; few refugees had coin to spend in common rooms.
A handful of others dotted the members of the Band.  Plump men in Tairen coats tight to the waist or bony fellows in Murandian coats hanging to the knee; sharp-eyed women in dresses high-necked or ankle-length, but always in well-cut wool of sober color. Merchants all, ready to leap in when trade reopened between Andor and Cairhien. And in every common room two or three men sat apart from the others, usually alone, for the most part hard-eyed fellows, some well dressed, others little better garbed than the refugees, but every one looking as if he knew how to use the sword at his hip or on his back. Mat identified two women with that lot, though neither showed a weapon; one had a long walking staff propped against her table, and he supposed the other had knives hidden in her riding dress. He carried a few throwing knives tucked about his person, too. He was sure he knew what she and the others were about, and she was a fool if she went at it unarmed.
As he and Edorion stepped out of The Wagoner’s Whip, Mat stopped to watch a blocky woman in divided brown skirts wend her way through the crowds.  So, a third woman in the lot. Hunters for the Horn was what they were, the legendary Horn of Valere that would call dead heroes back from the grave to fight in the Last Battle. Whoever found it would earn a place in the histories. If there’s anyone left to write a bloody history, Mat thought wryly.
Some believed the Horn would turn up where there was turmoil and strife. Four hundred years since the Hunt of the Horn was last called, and this time people had all but dropped out of the trees to take the oaths. He had seen flocks of Hunters in the streets of Cairhien, and he expected to see more flocks when he reached Tear. Without doubt they would be streaming toward Caemlyn now as well. He wished one of them had found the thing. To the best of his knowledge the Horn of bloody Valere lay somewhere deep in the White Tower, and if he knew anything about Aes Sedai he would be surprised if a dozen of them were aware of it.
A troop of foot behind a mounted officer in a dented breastplate and a Cairhienin helmet marched between him and the blocky woman, close to two hundred pikemen, weapons a tall forest of spikes, followed by fifty or more archers with quivers on hips and bows slung on shoulders. Not the Two Rivers longbow Mat had grown up with, but a fair enough weapon. He had to find enough crossbows to go around, though the archers would not willingly make the change. They sang as they marched, the massed voices enough to punch through the rest of the noise.
“You’ll feed on beans and on rotten hay,
and a horse’s hoof come your naming day.

A fat knot of civilians trailed along behind, townsmen and refugees mingled, young men all, watching curiously and listening. It never ceased to amaze Mat. The worse the song made soldiering seem—this was far from the worst—the larger the crowd. Sure as water was wet, some of those men would be talking to a bannerman before the day was out, and most who did would sign their names or make their mark. They must think the song was an attempt to scare them off and keep the glory and loot. At least the pikes were not singing “Dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.” Mat hated that song. Once the lads realized Jak o’ the Shadows was death, they started panting to find a bannerman.
“Your girl will marry another man.
A muddy grave will be all your land.
Food for the worms and none to mourn.

If you go to be a soldier.”
“There’s a good deal of wondering,” Edorion said casually as the formation swung on down the street with its trail of idiots, “about when we’ll be heading south. There are rumors.” He peered at Mat from the corner of his eye, measuring his mood. “I noticed the farriers checking the teams for the supply wagons.”
“We’ll move when we move,” Mat told him. “No need to let Sammael know we’re coming.”
Edorion gave him a level look. This Tairen was no dunce. Not that Nalesean was—he was just overeager sometimes—but Edorion had a sharp mind. Nalesean would never have noticed the farriers. Too bad that House Aldiaya outranked House Selorna, or Mat would have had Edorion in Nalesean’s place.  No, Edorion was no blockhead; he knew that as soon as the Band moved south word would speed ahead with the river traffic, and maybe by pigeon as well. Mat would not have placed a bet against spies in Maerone if he had felt his luck strong enough to pound his skull apart.
“There’s also a rumor the Lord Dragon was in the town yesterday,” Edorion said, as softly as the street noise would allow.
“The biggest thing that happened yesterday,” Mat said wryly, “was I had my first bath in a week. Now come on. It’s going to take half what daylight is left to finish this as it is.”
He would have given a pretty to find out how that rumor began.  It had been the small hours of morning when a slash of light suddenly appeared in his room at The Golden Stag. He had thrown himself desperately across the four-posted bed, one boot on and one half off, pulling the knife he wore hanging between his shoulder blades before he realized it was Rand, stepping out of one of those bloody holes in nothing, apparently from the palace in Caemlyn by the columns visible before the opening winked out. It was startling, him coming in the middle of the night, without any Aiel, and popping right into Mat’s room, which last still made the hair on Mat’s neck stand up. That thing could have sliced him in two had he been standing in the wrong place. He did not like the One Power. The whole thing had been very strange.
“Make haste slowly, Mat,” Rand said, striding up and down. He never looked in Mat’s direction. Sweat slicked his face, and his jaw was tight. “He has to see it coming. Everything depends on it.”
Seated on his bed, Mat jerked his boot the rest of the way off and dropped it on the scrap of rug Mistress Daelvin had given him. “I know,” he said sourly, pausing to rub an ankle he had cracked on a bedpost. “I helped make the bloody plan, remember?”
“How do you know you’re in love with a woman, Mat?” Rand did not stop his striding, and he dropped it in as if it fit what he had been saying.
Mat blinked. “How in the Pit of Doom should I know? That’s one snare I’ve never put a foot in. What brought that on?”
But Rand only moved his shoulders as though shrugging something off. “I’ll finish Sammael, Mat. I promised that; I owe it to the dead. But where are the others? I need to finish them all.”
“One at a time, though. “ He barely managed to keep the question out of that; there was no telling what Rand might take into his head these days.
“There are Dragonsworn in Murandy, Mat. In Altara, too. Men sworn to me. Once Illian is mine, Altara and Murandy will drop like ripe plums. I’ll make contact with the Dragonsworn in Tarabon—and in Arad Doman—and if the Whitecloaks try to keep me out of Amadicia, I’ll crush them. The Prophet has Ghealdan primed, and Amadicia almost, so I hear. Can you imagine Masema as the Prophet? Saldaea will come to me; Bashere is sure of it. All the Borderlands will come. They have to! I am going to do it, Mat. Every land united before the Last Battle. I’m going to do it!” Rand’s voice had taken on a feverish tone.
“Sure, Rand,” Mat said slowly, depositing his other boot beside the first. “But one thing at a time, right?”
“No man should have another man’s voice in his head, “ Rand muttered, and Mat’s hands froze in the act of tugging off a woolen stocking. Oddly, he found himself wondering whether the pair had another day’s wear in them. Rand knew something of what had happened inside that ter’angreal in Rhuidean—knew he had somehow gained knowledge of soldiering, anyway—but not the whole of it. Mat thought not the whole of it. Not about other men’s memories. Rand did not seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He just scrubbed fingers through his hair and went on. “He can be gulled, Mat—Sammael always thinks in straight lines—but is there any opening he can slip through? If there’s any mistake, thousands will die. Tens of thousands. Hundreds will anyway, but I don’t want it to be thousands.”
Mat grimaced so fiercely that a sweaty-faced hawker trying to sell him a dagger, the hilt half-covered in colorful glass “gems” nearly dropped the thing burying himself in the crowd. It had all been like that with Rand, bouncing from the invasion of Illian to the Forsaken to women—Light, Rand was the one who always had the way with women, him and Perrin—from the Last Battle to the Maidens of the Spear to things Mat hardly understood, seldom listening to Mat’s replies and sometimes not even waiting for them. Hearing Rand talk about Sammael as if he knew the man was more than just disconcerting. He knew Rand would go mad eventually, but if madness was creeping in already . . .
And what of the others, those fools Rand was gathering who wanted to channel, and this fellow Taim, who already could?  When they all started going insane, Mat did not want to be within a thousand miles.
Only he had as much choice as a leaf in a whirlpool. He was ta’veren, but Rand was more so. Nothing in the Prophecies of the Dragon about Mat Cauthon, but he was caught, a shoat under a fence. Light, but he wished he had never seen the Horn of Valere.
It was with a grim face that he stalked through the next dozen taverns and common rooms, circling out from The Golden Stag. They were really no different from the first, packed tables full of men drinking and dicing and arm-wrestling, musicians often as not drowned out by the uproar, Redarms quashing fights as soon as they began, a gleeman reciting The Great Hunt in one—that was popular even without Hunters about—in another a short, pale-haired woman singing a slightly bawdy song somehow made bawdier by her round face of wide-eyed innocence.
His bleak mood held when he left The Silver Horn—idiotic name!—and its innocent-faced singer.  The Redarms would take care of it if it involved soldiers, but Mat shoved his way through the crowd anyway. Rand going mad, leaving him hanging out in the storm.  Sammael waiting in Illian, and the rest of the Forsaken the Light knew where, all probably looking for a chance to take Mat Cauthon’s head in passing. That did not even count what the Aes Sedai would do to him if they laid hands on him again: the ones who knew too much, anyway.  He usually tried to talk his way out of a fight if he could not walk wide of it, but right then he wanted an excuse to punch somebody in the nose. What he found was not anything he expected.
A crowd of townspeople, short, drably clothed Cairhienin and a sprinkling of taller Andorans in brighter colors, made an expressionless ring around two tall lean men with curled mustaches, long Murandian coats in bright silk, and swords with ornate, gilded pommels and quillons. The fellow in a red coat stood grinning in amusement while he watched the one in yellow shake a boy little taller than Mat’s waist by the collar like a dog shaking a rat.
Mat held on to his temper; he reminded himself that he did not know what had started all this. “Easy with the boy,” he said, laying a hand on yellow-coat’s arm. “What did he do to deserve—?”
“He touched me horse!” the man snapped in a Mindean accent, shaking off Mat’s hand. Mindeans boasted—boasted!—that they had the worst tempers of anyone in Murandy. “I’ll break his skinny peasant neck for him! I’ll wring his scrawny—!”
 The Murandian’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes rolled up till almost nothing showed but white. The boy darted off as the man’s legs folded, depositing him on knees and face in the street. “No, you won’t,” Mat said.
That was not the end of it, of course; the man in the red coat snatched at his sword. He managed to bare an inch of blade before Mat cracked his wrist with the spear-butt. Grunting, he let go the sword hilt, but grabbed for the long-bladed dagger on his belt with his other hand. Hastily Mat clipped him over the ear; not hard, but the fellow went down atop the other man. Bloody fool! Mat was not sure whether he was describing red-coat or himself.
Half a dozen Redarms had finally pushed through the onlookers, Tairen cavalrymen awkward afoot in knee boots, their swollen black-and-gold sleeves crushed under the armbands. Edorion had the boy in hand, a gaunt sullen-looking lad of six or so, wriggling bare toes in the dust and now and again giving an experimental tug at Edorion’s grip.  By the holes in his coat and breeches, he was one of the refugees. He looked more dirt than anything else.
“Settle this out, Harnan,” Mat said. That was a lantern-jawed Redarm, a file leader with a long-suffering expression and a crude tattoo of a hawk on his left cheek. The fashion seemed to be spreading through the Band, but most limited themselves to parts of the body normally covered. “Find out what caused all this, then run these two louts out of town.” They deserved that much, whatever the provocation.
A skinny man in a Murandian coat of dark wool wiggled through the onlookers and dropped to his knees beside the man on the ground.  The newcomer made more noise than both together. “Oh, me Lords! Me Lord Paers! Me Lord Culen! Are you killed?” He stretched trembling hands toward Mat.  Not helpless like this. They’re Hunters for the Horn, me Lord. I’m their man, Padry.  “But you get these heroes on their horses and out of Maerone by sunset. I don’t like grown men who threaten to break a child’s neck. Sunset!”
“But me Lord, they’re injured. He’s only a peasant boy, and he was molesting Lord Paers’ horse.”
“I was only sitting on it,” the boy burst out. “I was not—what you said.”
Mat nodded grimly. “Boys don’t get their necks broken for sitting on a horse, Padry. Not even peasant boys. You get these two gone, or I’ll see about breaking their necks.” He motioned to Harnan, who nodded sharply to the other Redarms—file leaders never did anything themselves, any more than bannermen did—who snatched Paers and Culen up roughly and hustled them away groaning with Padry trailing behind, wringing his hands and protesting that his masters were in no condition to ride, that they were Hunters for the Horn and heroes.
Edorion still held the source of all this bother by an arm, Mat realized. The Redarms were gone, and the townsfolk drifting away. No one glanced twice at the boy; they had their own children to look after, and a hard enough time doing that. Mat exhaled heavily. “Don’t you realize you could be hurt ‘just sitting’ on a strange horse, boy? A man like that probably rides a stallion that could trample a little boy into the bottom of his stall so no one could ever tell you were there.”
“A gelding.”  “It was a gelding, and it would not have hurt me. Horses like me. I am not a little boy: I am nine. And my name is Olver, not boy.”
“Olver, is it?” Nine? He might be. Mat had trouble telling, especially with Cairhienin children. “Well, Olver, where are your mother and father?” He looked around, but the refugees he saw passed by as quickly as the townsfolk. “Where are they, Olver? I have to get you back to them.”
Instead of answering, Olver bit his lip. A tear trickled from one eye, and he scrubbed it away angrily. “The Aiel killed my papa. One of those . . . Shaido. Mama said we were going to Andor. She said we were going to live on a farm. With horses.”
“Where is she now?” Mat asked softly.
“She got sick. I—I buried her where there were some flowers.” Suddenly Olver kicked Edorion and began thrashing in his grip. Tears rolled down his face. “You let me go. I can take care of myself. You let me go.”
“Take care of him until we can find somebody,” Mat told Edorion, who gaped at him in the middle of trying to fend the boy off and hold on to him at the same time.
“Me? What am I to do with this leopard of a carpet mouse?”
“Get him a meal, for one thing!” Mat’s nose wrinkled; by the smell, Olver had spent at least a little time on the floor of that gelding’s stall. “And a bath. He stinks.”
“You talk to me,” Olver shouted, rubbing at his face. The tears helped him rearrange the dirt. “You talk to me, not over my head!”
Mat blinked, then bent down. “I’m sorry, Olver. I always hated people doing that to me, too. Now, this is how it is. You smell bad, so Edorion here is going to take you to The Golden Stag, where Mistress Daelvin is going to let you have a bath.” The sulkiness on Olver’s face grew. “If she says anything, you tell her I said you could have one. She can’t stop you.” Mat held in a grin at the boy’s sudden stare; that would have spoiled it. Olver might not like the idea of a bath, but if someone might try to stop him from having one . . . “Now, you do what Edorion says. He’s a real Tairen lord, and he’s going to find you a good hot meal, and some clothes without holes in them. And some shoes.” Best not to add “somebody to look after you.” Mistress Daelvin could take care of that; a little gold would overcome any reluctance.
“I do not like Tairens,” Olver mumbled, frowning first at Edorion then Mat.  “He is a real lord? Are you a lord, too?”
Before Mat could say anything, Estean came running through the crowd, lumpy face red and sweat-soaked. His dented breastplate retained few shreds of its former gilded glory, and the red satin stripes on his yellow coatsleeves were worn. He did not at all look the son of the richest lord in Tear. But then, he never had. “Mat,” he puffed, shoving fingers through lank hair that kept falling over his forehead. “Mat . . . down at the river . . . ”
“What?” Mat cut in irritably. He was going to start having “I am not a bloody lord” embroidered on his coats. “Sammael? The Shaido? The Queen’s Guards?  What?”
“A ship, Mat,” Estean panted, raking at his hair. “A big ship. I think it’s the Sea Folk.”
That was unlikely; the Atha’an Miere never took their ships farther from open sea than the nearest port. Still . . . there were not very many villages along the Erinin to the south, and the supplies the wagons could carry were going to run thin before the Band reached Tear. He had already hired riverboats to trail along with the march, but a larger vessel would be more than useful.
“Look after Olver, Edorion,” he said, ignoring the man’s grimace. “Estean, show me this ship.” Estean nodded eagerly and would have set out at a run again if Mat had not grabbed his sleeve to slow him to a walk. Estean was always eager, and he learned slowly; the combination was the reason he bore five bruises from Mistress Daelvin’s cudgel.
The numbers of refugees grew as Mat neared the river, both going down and coming back lethargically. Half-a-dozen broad-beamed ferries sat tied to the long tarred-timber docks, but the oars had been carried away and there was not a crewman in sight on any of them. The only boats showing any activity were half-a-dozen rivercraft, stout one- and two-masted vessels that had put in briefly on their way upriver or down. The barefoot crewmen barely stirred on the boats Mat had hired; their holds were full, and their captains assured him they could sail as soon as he gave the word. Ships moved on the Erinin, wallowing bluff-bowed craft with square sails and quick narrow vessels with triangular sails, but nothing crossing between Maerone and walled Aringill, where the White Lion of Andor flew.
That banner had flown above Maerone, too, and the Andoran soldiers who held the town had not been willing to let the Band of the Red Hand enter. Rand might hold Caemlyn, but his command did not extend to the Queen’s Guards here, or the units that Gaebril had raised, like the White Lions. The White Lions were somewhere to the east now—they had fled in that direction, anyway, and any of a dozen rumors of brigands could have been their work—but the rest had crossed the river after sharp skirmishing with the Band. Nothing had crossed the Erinin since.
The only thing Mat really saw, though, was a ship anchored in the middle of the broad river. It really was a Sea Folk vessel, taller and longer than any of the river craft but still sleek, with two raked masts. Dark figures climbed about in the rigging, some bare-chested in baggy breeches that looked black at the distance, some in bright-colored blouses marking the women. Half the crew would be women, near enough. The big square sails had been pulled up to the crossyards, yet they hung in slack folds, ready to be loosed in an instant.
“Find me a boat,” he told Estean. “And some rowers.” Estean would need to be reminded of that. The Tairen blinked at him, raking at his hair. “Hurry, man!” Estean nodded jerkily and lurched into a run.
Walking down to the end of the nearest dock, Mat propped his spear on his shoulder and dug his looking glass from his coat pocket. When he put the brass-bound tube to his eye, the ship leaped closer. The Sea Folk appeared to be waiting for something, but what? Some glanced toward Maerone, but most were staring the opposite way, including everyone on the tall quarterdeck; that would be where the Sailmistress was, and the other ship’s officers. He swung the looking glass to the far side of the river, crossing a long narrow rowboat with dark men at the oars, racing toward the ship.
There was something of a commotion on one of Aringill’s long docks, nearly the twins of Maerone’s. White-collared red coats and burnished breastplates denoted Queen’s Guardsmen, plainly meeting a knot of arrivals from the ship. What made Mat whistle softly was the pair of fringed red parasols among the newcomers, one of two tiers. Sometimes those old memories came in handy; that two-tiered parasol marked a clan Wavemistress, the other her Swordmaster.
“I have a boat, Mat,” Estean announced breathlessly at his-shoulder. “And some rowers.”
Mat turned the looking glass back to the ship. By the activity on deck, they were hauling the small boat up on the other side, but already men at the capstan were hauling the anchor up and the sails were being shaken out. “Looks like I won’t need it,” he muttered.
On the other side of the river the Atha’an Miere delegation vanished up the dock with an escort of guardsmen. The whole thing made no sense. Sea Folk nine hundred miles from the sea. Only the Mistress of the Ships outranked a Wavemistress; only the Master of the Blades outranked a Swordmaster. No sense at all, not by any of those other men’s memories. But they were old; he “remembered” that less was known of the Atha’an Miere than of any people except the Aiel. He knew more of Aiel from his own experience than from those memories, and that little enough. Maybe somebody who knew the Sea Folk today could make top from bottom in it.
Already sails billowed above the Sea Folk ship, with the anchor still being hauled dripping onto the foredeck. Whatever had them in such a hurry, it apparently would not take them back to the sea. With slowly increasing speed the vessel glided upriver, curving toward the marsh-lined mouth of the Alguenya a few miles north of Maerone.
Well, it was nothing to do with him. With one last regretful look at the ship—the thing would have carried as much as all the smaller craft he had hired put together—Mat shoved the looking glass back in his pocket and turned his back on the river. Estean was still hovering, staring at him.
“Tell the rowers they can go, Estean,” Mat sighed, and the Tairen stumped away muttering to himself and scrubbing his hands through his hair.
More mud was visible than the last time he had come down to the river a few days ago. Just a sticky strip less than a hand wide between the water and the pace-deep band of cracked mud above, but proof even a river like the Erinin was slowly drying up. Nothing to do with him. Nothing he could do about it, anyway. He turned and headed back to his rounds of the taverns and common rooms; it was important that nothing seem out of the ordinary about today.
When the sun went down, Mat was back in The Golden Stag, dancing with Betse, minus her apron, while the musicians played as loudly as they could. Country dances this time, and tables pushed back to make room for six or eight couples. Dark brought a little coolness, but only by comparison with daylight. Everyone still sweated. Men laughing and drinking filled the benches, and the serving girls scurried to put mutton, turnips and barley soup on the tables and keep ale mugs and wine-cups full.
Surprisingly, the women seemed to consider dancing a break from lugging trays about. At least, every one of them smiled eagerly when it was her turn to dab perspiration from her face and doff her apron for a dance, though she sweated just as hard once it began. Maybe Mistress Daelvin had worked out some sort of schedule. If she had, Betse was an exception. That slender young woman fetched wine for no one but Mat, danced with no one but Mat, and the innkeeper beamed at them so much like a mother at her daughter’s wedding that it made Mat uncomfortable.  Except when they stopped to catch breath, of course. For him to catch breath; she certainly showed no need. As soon as their feet halted, her tongue took off at a gallop. For that matter, it did the same whenever he tried to kiss her, and she always turned her head, exclaiming over something or other, so he kissed an ear or hair instead of lips. She always seemed startled by it, too. He still could not figure out whether she was an utter feather-head or very clever.
It was closer to two hours past midnight than one by the clock when he finally told her he had had enough for one night. Disappointment crossed her face, and a small pout appeared. She looked ready to dance until dawn. She was not alone; one of the older serving women was leaning on one hand against a wall to massage a foot, but most of the others appeared bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as Betse. The greater part of the men appeared to be wearing out, fixed smiles on those letting themselves be dragged away from their benches and a good many just waving the women away. Mat did not understand. It must be because the man did most of the work in dancing, he decided, all the lifting and turning. And women were light; leaping about simply took less energy for them. Blinking at a stout serving maid who was whirling Estean around the floor rather than the other way—the man could dance; he had that talent—Mat pressed a gold coin into Betse’s hand, a fat Andoran crown, for her to buy herself something pretty.
She studied the coin for a moment, then lifted up on her toes to kiss him lightly on the mouth, like the brush of a feather. “I would never hang you whatever you did. You will dance with me tomorrow?” Before he could answer she giggled and darted away, eyeing him over her shoulder even when she started trying to pull Edorion out to the dance area. Mistress Daelvin intercepted the pair and, shoving an apron into Betse’s hands, jerked a thumb toward the kitchens.
Mat limped slightly as he made his way to the table against the back wall where Talmanes, Daerid and Nalesean had ensconced themselves. Talmanes was staring into his winecup as if to find deep answers. A grinning Daerid was watching Nalesean try to fend off a plump serving maid with gray eyes and light brown hair while not admitting that his feet were sore. Mat leaned his fists on the table. “The Band moves south at first light. You best start making preparations.” The three men gaped at him.
“That is only a few hours,” Talmanes protested at the same time that Nalesean said, “It will take that long just to root them out of the drinking rooms.”
Wincing, Daerid shook his head. “None of us will get any sleep tonight.”
“I will,” Mat said. “One of you wake me in two hours. First light, and we’re marching.”
Which was how he found himself astride Pips, his sturdy brown gelding, in the gray predawn, with his spear across his saddle and his unstrung longbow shoved beneath his saddle girth, with not enough sleep and an ache behind his eyes, watching the Band of the Red Hand leave Maerone. All six thousand of them. Half horse, half foot, and all making enough noise to rouse the dead. Despite the hour, people lined the streets and hung gawking from every upper window.
The Band’s square red-fringed banner led the way, a red hand on white, the Band’s motto crimson-embroidered below. Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. “It’s time to toss the dice.” Nalesean, Daerid and Talmanes rode with the flag, ten mounted men pounding away at brass kettledrums hung with scarlet skirting, and as many trumpeters adding flourishes. Behind came Nalesean’s horsemen, a mixture of Tairen armsmen and Defenders of the Stone, Cairhienin lordlings with con on their backs and retainers at their heels, and a sprinkling of Andorans, each squadron and troop with its own long banner bearing the Red Hand, a sword and a number. Mat had had them draw lots for who got which number.
The mixing had caused some grumbling; more than a little, truth to tell. In the beginning, Cairhienin horse all followed Talmanes, and Tairens Nalesean. The foot had been a mongrel lot from the start. There had been mutters about making each unit the same size, too, and the numbers on the pennants. Lords and captains had always gathered as many men as would follow, who were known as Edorion’s men, or Meresin’s, or Alhandrin’s. They still did some of that—for example, Edorion’s five hundred called themselves Edorion’s Hammers, not the First Squadron—but Mat had driven it into their heads that every man belonged to the Band, not whatever land he had happened to be born in, and any who did not like doing things his way were free to leave. The remarkable thing was, none had.
Why they stayed was hard to understand. Certainly they won when he led them, but some still died. He had a difficult time keeping them fed and seeing they got their pay more or less on time, and they might as well forget the wealth they boasted they were going to loot. Nobody had seen a coin of it so far, and he did not see much chance they ever would. It was madness.
The First Squadron raised a cheer quickly taken up by the Fourth and Fifth. Carlomin’s Leopards and Reimon’s Eagles, they called themselves. “Lord Matrim and victory! Lord Matrim and victory!”
If Mat had had a rock handy, he would have thrown it at them.
The infantry came next in a flowing snake, each company behind a drum beating cadence as well as one of the long pennants, theirs with a pike instead of a sword across the hand, twenty ranks bristling with pikes followed by five of archers or crossbowmen. Each company had a flute or two as well, and they sang to the music.
“We’ll drink all night and dance all day,
and on the girls we’ll spend our pay,
and when we’re done, then we’ll away,
to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.”
Mat waited out the song until the first of Talmanes’ cavalry appeared, then dug his heels into Pips’ flanks. No need to attend the supply wagons at the tail end, or the strings of remounts. Horses would go lame between here and Tear, or die from things the farriers could not remedy, and a cavalryman without a horse was not worth much. On the river seven small ships crept downstream under triangular sails, little faster than the current. Each carried a small white flag with the Red Hand. Other craft were setting forth, too, some sprinting south under every scrap of canvas they could hold.
As he caught up to the head of the column the sun finally peeked above the horizon, sending the first rays across the rolling hills and scattered thickets. He pulled his hat low against the glare of the brilliant sliver. Nalesean had a gauntleted fist to his mouth stifling an impressive yawn, and Daerid sat slumped in his saddle, heavy-lidded, as if he might drift off to sleep right there. Only Talmanes was straight-backed, wide-eyed and alert. Mat felt more in sympathy with Daerid.
Even so, he raised his voice to be heard over the drums and trumpets. “Put the scouts out as soon as we’re beyond sight of the town.” Both forest and open country lay farther south, but a fairly well established road cut across both; most traffic went by water, but enough had gone on foot or wagon over the years to mark out a track.  Nalesean said wonderingly. “Burn my soul, there’s no one with so much as a spear inside ten miles of us, unless you think the White Lions have stopped running, and if they have, they won’t come closer than fifty miles if they have any notion we’re about.”
Mat ignored him. “I want to make thirty-five miles today. When we can do thirty-five every day, we’ll see how far we can push it.” They gaped at him, of course. Horses could not maintain that pace very long, and anybody but Aiel considered twenty-five miles an excellent day’s march for foot. But he had to play this out the way it had been dealt. “Comadrin wrote, ‘Attack on ground where your enemy believes you will not, from an unexpected direction at an unexpected time. Defend where your enemy believes you are not, and when he believes you will run. Surprise is the key to victory, and speed is the key to surprise. For the soldier, speed is life.’ ”
“Who is Comadrin?” Talmanes asked after a moment, and Mat had to gather himself to answer.
“A general. Dead a long time. I read his book once.” He remembered reading it, anyway, more than once; he doubted a copy existed anywhere now. For that matter, he remembered meeting Comadrin, after losing a battle to him some six hundred years before Artur Hawkwing. Those memories did creep up on him. At least he had not delivered that little speech in the Old Tongue; he usually managed to avoid that sort of thing now.
Watching the mounted scouts fan out ahead across the rolling river plain, Mat relaxed. His part of it was begun, according to plan. A hasty departure on short notice as if he were trying to sneak away south, but showy enough to make sure it was noticed. The combination would make him seem a fool, and that was to the good, too. Teaching the Band to move fast was a good idea—moving fast could keep you away from the fighting—but their progress was sure to be noted from the river if nowhere else. He scanned the sky; no ravens or crows, but that did not mean much. No pigeons, either, yet if none had left Maerone this morning he would eat his saddle.
In a few days at most Sammael would learn the Band was coming, hurrying, and the word Rand had put about down in Tear would have made it clear that Mat’s arrival would signal the imminent invasion of Illian. At the best speed the Band could do, it was still more than a month to Tear. With any luck, Sammael would be cracked like a louse between two rocks before Mat ever had to come within a hundred miles of the man. Sammael could see everything coming—almost everything—but it was going to be a different dance than he expected. Different than anyone but Rand, Mat and Bashere expected. That was the real plan. Mat actually found himself whistling. For once everything was going to work out the way he expected.


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class studs::Proc
sys::Obj studs::Proc
Proc manages spawning an external OS process. This class differs from sys::Process by optimizing the API for interaction with the child process over stdio.
- cmd
-
const Str[] cmd
Command argument list used to launch process. The first item is the executable itself, then rest are the parameters.
- dir
-
const File? dir := null
Working directory for child process.
- env
-
const Str:Str env := [Str:Str][:]
Environment variables to pass to child process. This map is initialized with the current process environment.
- err
-
InStream err()
Return InStream used to read process stderr.
- exitCode
-
Int? exitCode()
Return the exit code for child process,
null
if process has not started, or throws Err if process has not yet terminated. - in
-
InStream in()
Return InStream used to read process stdout.
- isRunning
-
Bool isRunning()
Return
true
if child process is currently running orfalse
if not started or terminated. - kill
-
This kill()
Kill the child process. Use
waitFor
to block until the process has terminated. - make
-
new make(|This| f)
It-block constructor.
- okOrThrow
-
This okOrThrow()
Check the exit code the process returned. If the code was
0
return this. If the code was non-zero throws an IOErr. If the process is still running, the same semantics apply asexitCode
. - out
-
OutStream out()
Return OutStream used to write to process stdin.
- redirectErr
-
const Bool redirectErr := false
If
true
, then stderr is redirected to stdout. - run
-
This run()
Spawn the child process. See
waitFor
to block until the process has terminated, andexitCode
to retreive process exit code. - sinkErr
-
This sinkErr()
Sink the stderr output stream to Fantom's stdout. This method will spawn a background actor to pipe the process stderr stream to
Env.cur.out
. Must be called afterrun
and requiresredirectErr
to befalse
. Once this method has been invoked,err
is no longer available. - waitFor
-
This waitFor()
Block the current thread until the child process has terminated. Use
exitCode
to retreive exit code.


Quizzing application that selects random students and random questions.
Randomized Student: {{qac.selected_student.name}} - Correct: {{qac.selected_student.correct}} - Incorrect: {{qac.selected_student.incorrect}}
Question: {{qac.selected_question.text}}
Answer: {{qac.selected_question.answer}}


The Request Socket Server involves one requirement to function: user classes implementing {@link org.codemonkey.swiftsocketserver.ClientMessageToServer} and {@link org.codemonkey.swiftsocketserver.ServerMessageToClient} to register self-encoding/decoding Java message objects with the server.
Note that the server mode (TCP / UDP) doesn't change how the user interacts with the server: the type of transport is managed by the server without breaking API.
@since 1.0


todos
Create a new task
Create new todo
Mark as completed
Mark all as completed
List of
${current-filter}
tasks:
Mark as
${completed}
${item-text}
Delete
Current status
${count}
${'item|s'} left
Filter task list
All
Active
Completed
Clear completed tasks
Clear completed (
${count}
)


Back to BioBike Documentation Contents
Copyright (c) 2003 by The BioBike Team
Put another way, NIL and () are EQ.
In Lisp, as opposed to many other similar languages, the empty list, (), and logical FALSE, NIL, are identical.
Usually what gets printed out is NIL. Sometimes you see () because it is possible to tell the Lisp printer to print out () instead of NIL. Also, there may be code that does its own printing, and it might print out a list by printing a left paren, then the elements, then a right paren, without specifically checking whether the list is empty.
This happens because you are using EQUALP as a test instead of EQ or EQL. EQUALP is defined recursively -- two things can be EQUALP if they have components and their components are pairwise EQUALP, so you may be able to see how you could get into an infinite recursion, although not the particulars in this case.
Now a frame is an object that has components. And one of its components is its #$Fname, which itself is a frame, which has components, one of which is its #$Fname, which itself is a frame, which has components, one of which is its #$Fname,... stack overflow ... core dumped.
While it is tempting to use EQUALP as your general, all-purpose comparison function, in some cases (as we just demonstrated) it's going to get you into trouble. You can't compare one frame to another using EQUALP, but you can use EQUAL, EQ, or EQL.
Unfortunately, equality is not a trivial concept. Sometimes you really have to think about what it is you are asking about in terms of similarity, equality, identicalness, etc. One key thing to understand is when things are unique and when they are not.
For example, there is exactly one, and only one, symbol denoted by: CAR You can type 'CAR as many times as you want and you will always get back the identical, same, unique symbol named CAR. If you setf two different variables to 'CAR, they are both pointing to exactly the same thing, and you can use any sort of equality test (except, obviously, a numerical one) to test their equality:
>> (setq a 'car) >> (setq b 'car) >> (eq a b) :: T
But that's not true for most other things. Usually, complex things are not actually the very same thing, they just LOOK the same. Take strings, for example: If you type "abc" and then type "abc" again you get two similar strings, but they are not identical. There is no unique string "abc"; there are a potentially infinite number of strings all of length 3 that contain the characters 'a', 'b' and 'c'.
>> (setq a "abc") >> (setq b "abc") >> (eq a b) :: NIL
Nor is it true for numbers in Lisp. There is no 'canonical' number denoted by 1 in Lisp. 1's can be replicated all over Lisp's memory. Same for characters.
This might seem arcane, but it's extremely important and useful! Generally speaking, things looking alike is incidental. For example, Jeff Shrager and Jeff Elhai both have the first name "Jeff" but they are different people. They are EQUAL (at least in terms of their first names), but not EQ. EQUAL goes one more step than EQ, but not as far as EQUALP. EQUAL is actually pretty weird: it descends into elements of lists and strings, but nothing else, while EQUALP will descend into vectors and structures and other composite things as well.
>> (setq a "abc") >> (setq b "abc") >> (equal a b) :: T
Equalp is the most powerful (or weakest, depending on your point of view) kind of equality, descending recursively into pretty much everything that it can, which is why it blows up trying to recursively descend into frames. It also ignores case when testing strings (like STRING-EQUAL), unlike EQUAL (or STRING=).
>> (setq v1 #(1 2 3)) >> (setq v2 #(1 2 3)) >> (eq v1 v2) :: NIL >> (equal v1 v2) :: NIL >> (equalp v1 v2) :: TEQUAL and EQUALP implement two somewhat different notions of equality that the definers of the Common Lisp language thought were very useful. That's good, except when you get confused about exactly which one does what. The nice thing about Lisp is that, if you don't like these particular equality predicates, its really easy to write your own!
Things that are unique, like symbols (e.g., 'CAR) you want to use EQ as the test. But you must be very sure they are unique -- that you really want to test this unique sort of equality, and not just ask whether they look alike. Things that are not unique but which are 'atomic' you use EQL. Things that are neither unique nor atomic (i.e., they have subcomponents) you use EQUAL or EQUALP, depending on exactly what semantics you want. As a last result you can roll your own equality function.
BTW, all programming languages have these different meanings of equality. Lisp just makes the problem more explicit than many, and lets you do exactly what you want. In some languages, you simply can't distinguish between two strings that look alike. Their loss!
(defun mismatches-between-slow (string1 string2 mismatches-allowed) (LET ((mismatches-found 0)) (loop for i from 0 below (min (length string1) (length string2)) do (if (string= (subseq string1 i (1+ i)) (subseq string2 i (1+ i))) (incf mismatches-found)) (if (> mismatches-found mismatches-allowed) (return nil)) finally (return mismatches-found)))) [Jeff complains that this is very slow, compared to another implementation using PPCRE, a pattern matcher written in Lisp ] JP replies: There are many problems with this. First, did you compile WINDOW-MATCH-WITH-ERRORS? Otherwise, you are running an interpreted program against a highly optimized compiled regular expression pattern matcher. The biggest problem with this code is that it creates (conses) huge numbers of temporary strings, whereas the pattern matcher most certainly does not. Every time you do this: (IF (STRING= (SUBSEQ string1 i (1+ i)) (SUBSEQ string2 i (1+ i))) (INCF mismatches-found)) you are creating two temporary new strings (SUBSEQ always creates a new string), when in fact you don't need to create any strings at all. Notice that this is executing in the inner-inner loop of your code. Instead, you could do this: (if (char= (char string1 i) (char string2 i)) (incf mismatches-found)) Another issue is that in order to write highly optimized lisp code, you have to declare your variables, just like you have to declare everything all the time in C or Java. I'm not going to discuss this further at the moment, but suffice to say this can make all the difference in the world in the inner-inner loop of your code. Another issue is that if you want the compiler to generate very efficient code instead of generating code that does a lot of error checking, you have to tell it to do so. You may have seen the following: (declare (optimize (speed 3) (safety 0) (debug 0))) at the beginning of some of my functions. That's how you do it. Now, you may be saying, "BLETCH, BARF, SPIT, COUGH". Fair enough. But one of the strong points of Lisp is that in order to get good performance you ONLY have to worry about declarations in the inner-inner loops of your code. The rest of it can be coded as quickly, elegantly and inefficiently as you like.  I don't know. But the timings you did could easily be off by a factor of 3,10 or even 100 from what could be obtained with a bit of work. [[ As it later turned out, optimization made it FASTER than the pattern matcher... ]] Something to keep in mind. One of the points or 'aims' of BioBike is sort of that the implementers write the 'inner loops' of biologically important algorithms, and we let Biologists go and write the outer loops. Here is a comparison of an optimized version of MISMATCHES-BETWEEN with your original code. The FAST version runs somewhere around 60 times as fast as the SLOW version. (defun mismatches-between-fast (string1 string2 start1 end1 start2 end2 max-mismatches-allowed) (declare (simple-string string1 string2)) (declare (fixnum start1 end1 start2 end2 max-mismatches-allowed)) (declare (optimize (speed 3) (safety 0) (debug 0))) (let ((count 0)) (declare (fixnum count)) (loop for i fixnum from start1 below end1 for j fixnum from start2 below end2 do (when (eql (schar string1 i) (schar string2 j)) (incf count)) (when (> count max-mismatches-allowed) (return)) finally (return count) ))) (defun time-them (n) (declare (fixnum n)) (time (loop for j fixnum below n do (mismatches-between-fast "asdlkfaldkfa" "aslflkfadddddd" 0 12 0 14 4))) (time (loop for j fixnum below n do (mismatches-between-slow "asdlkfaldkfa" "aslflkfadddddd" 4)))) CL-USER 60 > (time-them 300000) Timing the evaluation of (LOOP FOR J FIXNUM BELOW N DO (MISMATCHES-BETWEEN-FAST "asdlkfaldkfa" "aslflkfadddddd" 0 12 0 14 4)) user time = 0.046 system time = 0.000 Elapsed time = 0:00:00 Allocation = 0 bytes standard / 0 bytes fixlen 0 Page faults Timing the evaluation of (LOOP FOR J FIXNUM BELOW N DO (MISMATCHES-BETWEEN-SLOW "asdlkfaldkfa" "aslflkfadddddd" 4)) user time = 2.765 system time = 0.000 Elapsed time = 0:00:03 Allocation = 172802152 bytes standard / 1232 bytes fixlen 0 Page faults NIL CL-USER 61 > (/ 0.046 2.765) 0.01663652802893309 CL-USER 62 > (/ 2.765 0.046) 60.108695652173914
The backslash is Lisp's escape character. So the string "abc" has exactly the same characters as the string "\a\b\c" To put a backslash in a string you have to escape the escape character: "\\a\\\\b" That's a string with five characters, a backslash, an 'a', two more backslashes, and a 'b'. Also, #\\ is the single character backslash (as opposed to a string with a single backslash character, "\\". (eql #\\ (char "\\" 0)) You use the '#\' notation to represent characters OUTSIDE of double-quoted strings. The #\ notation is not recognized INSIDE of double quotes. So "#\a" is a string consisting of two characters, pound sign and the letter 'a'. #\a is the single character object, the letter a. The #\ notation is not restricted to single character 'names'. Certain characters have 'verbose' english names: #\Space is a valid character. #\Newline another. To create a string with a Tab character in it you need to do something like (one-string "abc" #\Tab "def") (Note that ONE-STRING is a BIOBIKE macro, it's not Common Lisp per se. The equivalent using Common Lisp primitives is (concatenate 'string "abc" (string #\Tab) "def") which might give you a clue as to why we invented ONE-STRING...
E.g, why does
(defun foo () (flet ((bar (y) (1+ y)) (baz (z) (1- z))) (progn (baz 4) (mapcar 'bar '(1 2 3))))) (foo)error out with an 'undefined function BAR' error (while the call to BAZ works just fine) ?
Basically, it's quirk of the definition of Common Lisp. Whenever you refer to a local function defined with FLET or LABELS other than by calling it directly (as with BAZ, above) (such as with MAPCAR or APPLY), you must use #' notation. So changing the above MAPCAR call to
(mapcar #'bar '(1 2 3))will work. Note that if you refer to a function QUUX defined with DEFUN (which defines a function globally), you can use either the 'QUUX or the #'QUUX notation.


Hi there!
I'm David Evans
I'm a software engineer living near Nottingham, currently working for
Capital One
I'm always interested in new opportunities so feel free to get in
touch
About me
C#, SQL, .NET core, ASP.NET, MVC, JS, HTML, CSS, Git, AWS, Docker
Education
BSc Hons Computer Science - University of East Anglia (2007) 2:1 Attained
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Places I've worked
Joined team Asgard within the Grow tribe helping to deliver platform services that enable
Capital
One to comply with upcoming PSD2 regulation. PSD2 is designed to help end users gain control
over
their data, forcing businesses to open up access to one another. Using the Open Banking Standard
we
have implemented services that allow Capital One customers to grant consent to third parties so
that
they may securely share their account data with other financial organisations such as Yolt, a
money
management app. Recently took ownership of the Credit Limit Increase platform (CLIP) where we
have worked to improve the stability and maintainability of the service. CLIP would frequently
have
outages under load and our work has delivered a better experience for our customers and
significantly reduced revenue loss to the company.
Initially worked on a redevelopment project for Public Health England, a system that allows
direct
and secure retrieval of lab results for doctors. We took the decision to redevelop given the age
of
the
previous system and the lack of maintainability. Following the successful completion of the
project
for Public Health England I was promoted to a senior level and moved to working on a new
document
viewer plugin. This included developing a back end that could convert different document formats
into individual page images. During this project I also helped mentor developers as they
transitioned
from Classic ASP to C# .NET Core. Later I was part of a research project working to improve our
business intelligence products. We investigated using microservices on AWS that would be able to
take data from multiple sources and transform it into a data lake that would be compatible with
many
third-party BI tools.
Helped to maintain an existing web application for use in the chemical
regulatory industry. The main
objective was to simplify the creation of Safety Data Sheets, a complex regulatory document with
multiple rules for construction. Users would look up chemicals and the system would help
automate
large parts of the creation process. This included a review and sign off process and a document
management system. I also took ownership of the creation of an application to process chemical
data
from regulatory bodies into an internal reference database that would give users a foundation to
base their work on.
Worked on a desktop app for Playfire, a social network for gamers which
had over one million users.
The app allowed them to track various gaming platforms into one profile on Playfire. The
application
scrapes data from several gaming account sites and uploads the data to the user's Playfire
account.
During my time here I helped add new platforms to the scraper, optimize the performance of the
code and implemented a new UI.
Developed and maintained ticketing and retail websites for football,
cricket and rugby clubs.
Initially
maintaining around ten sites we had expanded to over thirty within two years, completely
redeveloping the site in that time. We created a new component to allow users to print tickets
at
home and gain entry using a barcode. I built much of the internal content management system from
the ground up, helping customers control website content and reducing calls to our helpdesk.
Programming scripts for data extraction and processing, taking data from
scanned forms to upload to
a document management system. I moved on to bug fixing and testing the core document
management system and later I worked on developing a custom version for the Health Protection
Agency. Later helping to develop a new product for an infection control system.


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