puncsig: Punctuation Signatures

What Is This?

Inspired by Ward Cunningham's Signature Survey: A Method for Browsing Unfamiliar Code, "puncsig" is short for "punctuation signature": it parses ruby code, and shows you just the punctuation from the methods. It gives you a rough idea of the length of each method, and helps you spot similar methods.

Install

In your Gemfile:

gem 'puncsig'

...or on your command line:

$ gem install puncsig

You know, the basics.

Use It

In your rails app:

$ bundle exec rake -T puncsig
rake puncsig:all          # Run puncsig on the whole app
rake puncsig:controllers  # Run puncsig on just the controllers
rake puncsig:helpers      # Run puncsig on just the helpers
rake puncsig:lib          # Run puncsig on just the files in lib
rake puncsig:models       # Run puncsig on just the models

TODO In a normal ruby app. It's not quite here yet, I want to separate it out a bit more. Coming soon, promise!

Example: rstat.us

Just for fun, let's take a look at the rstat.us source. I chose rstat.us strictly because a) it was open-source ruby, and b) it cleanly installed, so whatever puncsig says about the source, that's a great start - and I gave up on several others, because I couldn't get them installed easily. We all have code that needs some love, and I have much love for the people behind rstat.us.

$ be rake puncsig:models

[...]

app/models/salmon_author.rb
author_attributes:  {:=>,:=>,:=>,:=>,:=>,:=>,:=>}==().==.==.==.&&==.&&==.&&==.&&==.&&==.
avatar_url:         @..{||..==}..
email:              =@.==
initialize:         ()@=
bio:                @..
name:               @..
uri:                @.
username:           @.

[...]

app/models/user.rb
no_malformed_username:                   (=~/[@!#$\%&()*,^~{}|`=:;\\\/\[\]\?]/).?&&(=~/^[.]/).?&&(=~/[.]$/).?&&(=~/[.]{,}/).?.(:,.,,.)
send_mention_notification:               (,)=.:=>=.:=>=://#{.}/=::.(.())=..=.(..)=::.(.,.)=.(.,,{-=>/-+})
edit_user_profile:                       ()[:].?[:].?[:]==[:].=[:]..=.==[:].=[:]..=[:].=[:].=[:].=[:]...
following_url?:                          ()=.(:=>).?.?(://#{.}/)=[/\/\/(.+)$/,]=[.(:=>)].?!(&).?!
send_unfollow_notification:              ()=.:=>=::.(.,..)=..=.(..)=::.(.,.)=.(.,,{-=>/-+})
send_follow_notification:                ()=.:=>=::.(.,..)=..=.(..)=::.(.,.)=.(.,,{-=>/-+})

[...]

Look at these two signatures from app/models/discussion_list.rb:

send_unfollow_notification:              ()=.:=>=::.(.,..)=..=.(..)=::.(.,.)=.(.,,{-=>/-+})
send_follow_notification:                ()=.:=>=::.(.,..)=..=.(..)=::.(.,.)=.(.,,{-=>/-+})

There's clearly something similar about them. Here's the source:

  # Send Salmon notification so that the remote user
  # knows this user is following them
  def send_follow_notification(to_feed_id)
    f = Feed.first :id => to_feed_id

    salmon = OStatus::Salmon.from_follow(author.to_atom, f.author.to_atom)

    envelope = salmon.to_xml self.to_rsa_keypair

    # Send envelope to Author's Salmon endpoint
    uri = URI.parse(f.author.salmon_url)
    http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
    res = http.post(uri.path, envelope, {"Content-Type" => "application/magic-envelope+xml"})
  end

  # Send Salmon notification so that the remote user
  # knows this user has stopped following them
  def send_unfollow_notification(to_feed_id)
    f = Feed.first :id => to_feed_id

    salmon = OStatus::Salmon.from_unfollow(author.to_atom, f.author.to_atom)

    envelope = salmon.to_xml self.to_rsa_keypair

    # Send envelope to Author's Salmon endpoint
    uri = URI.parse(f.author.salmon_url)
    http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
    res = http.post(uri.path, envelope, {"Content-Type" => "application/magic-envelope+xml"})
  end

Definitely some kind of duplication there, and these methods aren't right next to each other in the source.

And it helps us find really long methods, like these bad boys:

app/models/update.rb
generate_html:              =.().!(/([]?:\/\/\+[---\/}])/,<=\\>\\</>).!()||$=.(:=>/^#{$}$/,:=>/^#{$}$/)=..?(/)=://#{.}#{}#{$}<=#{}>@#{$}@#{$}</>$=.(:=>/^#{$}$/)=..?(/)=://#{.}#{}#{$}<=#{}>@#{$}</>.!(/(^|\+)#(\+)/)||#{$}<=/?=%#{$}>##{$}</>.=

TODOS

• break it up & test it a bit.