Linux Journal’s [Mike Diehl] pointed out an interesting tool for manipulating data: Sprog. Sprog lets you assemble machines to complete specific data processing tasks. You snap together gears that read input data, process the data in different ways, and then output the results. The input could be a file, URL, database query results, or even MIDI notes. For processing you could be matching patterns, selecting csv columns, converting to uppercase, or executing arbitrary Perl code amongst many other options. Finally the output could be shown in a text window, inserted into a database, written to a file, or sent to your spreadsheet application. Sprog’s site has a section for user uploaded gears and a recipe section for examples like this crossword puzzle solver. Everything Sprog does could be done with scripting, but this is a simple graphical tool that could help you solve a problem without having to know the gory machinery behind it.
5 thoughts on “Data Manipulation With Sprog”
Leave a Reply to Andrew PollackCancel reply
Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)
That’s pretty neat. Beats writing a bunch of shell scripts and using pipes by hand.
This is almost as cool as Automater in OSX. The resemblance is uncanny…. I’ll have to check this out. I could definitely use this.
I don’t mean that “almost as cool” as a stab to FOSS. I am a diehard *BSD user going back to 4.3BSD on a VAX. I just don’t want RMS-humping freetard kiddies who can barely install Ubuntu with a real SysAdmin on the phone thinking I said Linux/GPL iZ tEh SuXx0Rz.
That might just open a can of worms LOL
looks like Scratch.
Tools like this show the long term direction technology needs to move in a next generation where computing becomes every more ubiquitous and the boundaries between “your stuff” and “public stuff” and “other people’s private stuff” start to get much more interactive.
The sad thing about it, is that there has not been a news update there in almost two years. So this projects has most likely died down.
cool. needs to be continued.