bash=${BASH_VERSION%.*}; bmajor=${bash%.*}; bminor=${bash#*.} echo "BASH VERSION --- $BASH_VERSION" echo "bmajor ----- $bmajor" echo "bminor ----- $bminor"   prints,  BASH VERSION --- 4.2.46(1)-release bash --- 4.2 bmajor ----- 4 bminor ----- 2   I normally use curly brackets, {} to work with arrays. I see here, they are used for pattern matching.   How these values, ${BASH_VERSION%.*}; bmajor=${bash%.*}; bminor=${bash#*.} are evaluated? And what does the special characters, *, ., # inside {} mean?
I'm quite confused about the following regular expressions I found in a shell script:  ${0##*/} ${0%/*}   How do they work?
I wanted to discuss my intuition of why we formulate the concept of continuity in terms of pre-image of open set is open instead of images for example if we consider $f(x) = c$ where $c$ is some constant, then that should be continuous, but if we formulated continuity in terms of images it won't be continuous. Is the reason we do it that way, because pre-images will always guarantee that function in the domain can only have $1$ value? Why is list initialization (using curly braces) better than the alternatives? How do I create tools with multiple properties? Is the "omniscient-omnipotent-omnipresent" definition of God consistent? is commonly defined as an  (infinite knowledge),  (unlimited power),  (present everywhere) entity.  Is there any logical  in this definition?  I have seen several paradoxes like below     Does God know what he's going to do   tomorrow? If so, could he do something   else?" If God knows what will happen,   and does something else, he's not   omniscient. If he knows and can't   change it, he's not omnipotent.      "Can 'an omnipotent being' create a   stone so heavy that it cannot lift   it?"   Do they mean that the defintion of God ( as commonly held) is logically inconsistent? Return multiple values to a method caller Why {are you / you are} making noise? When deriving the quadratic equation as shown in the  () the main proof contains the step: $$ \left(x+{\frac {b}{2a}}\right)^{2}={\frac {b^{2}-4ac}{4a^{2}}} $$ the square root is taken from both sides, so why is  $$\sqrt{4a^2} = 2a$$  in the denominator and not $$ \sqrt{4a^2} = 2\left |a  \right | $$ Could somebody explain this to me? Thank you very much Hubble's constant $a(t)$ appears to be changing over time. The fine stucture constant $\alpha$, like many others in QFT, is a running constant that varies, proportional to energy being used to measure it. Therefore, it could be agued that all running constants have 'evolved' over time as the Universe has expanded and cooled. Both the local and global curvature of the Universe changes over time implying that so too does the numerical value of $\pi$. All these things are however constants (well, let's say parameters since they are not really 'constant'.)   In  with astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, Feynman said "what today, do we not consider to be part of physics, that may ultimately become part of physics?" He then goes on to say "..it's interesting that in many other sciences there's a historical question, like in geology - the question how did the Earth evolve into the present condition? In biology - how did the various species evolve to get to be the way they are? But the one field that hasn't admitted any evolutionary question - is physics."  So have the laws of physics remained form-invariant over the liftetime of the Universe? Does the recent understanding of the aforementioned not-so-constant constants somehow filter into the actual form of the equations being used? Has advances in astronomical observations, enabling us to peer back in time as far back as the CMB, given us any evidence to suggest that the laws of nature have evolved? If Feynman thinks that "It might turn out that they're not the same all the time and that there is a historical, evolutionary question." then this is surely a question worth asking.  NB/ To be clear: this is a question concerning purely physics, whether the equations therein change as the Universe ages, and whether there is any observational evidence for this. It is not intended as an oportunity for a philosophical discussion. Show a connected metric space (X,d) is $\epsilon$-chainable for $\epsilon &gt;0$       $\epsilon$-chainable Definition      (X,d) is $\epsilon$-chainable if given any two points $a,b \in X$, $\exists$ a finite set $\{ x_0,x_1,...,x_n\}$ of points in X with $x_0 = a$, $x_n=b$ and $d(x_{n-1},x_n)&lt;\epsilon$, $\forall$ n      Clopen Definition      A set is clopen $iff$ its boundary is empty      Connected Metric Definition      Let $(X,d)$ be a metric space. It is connected $iff$ it has no proper subsets which are clopen      The following are equivalent:         $X$ is connected   The only subsets of $X$ that are clopen are $\emptyset$ and $X$   $\nexists$ non-empty, disjoint, open sets $A$ and $B$ such that $X=A\bigcup B$   $\nexists$ non-empty, disjoint, closed sets $A$ and $B$ such that $X=A\bigcup B$         Theorem      Let $(X,d)$ be a metric space, and let $S$ be any subset of $X$. Then $S$ is closed $iff$ $S^c$ is open.     So how would someone show this exactly?  Let the set $A$ be the set of all elements in $(X,d)$ that can be reached from $a\in X$ in a finite number of steps with length less than $\epsilon$.  Does this mean that there should be no isolated points? (an isolated point would be at distance infinity from any other point, or distance zero from itself, since $\epsilon &gt;0$ we don't want this?)  Knowing that $X$ is connected $\implies$the only subsets of X that are clopen are $\emptyset$ and $X$  Also, by construction of A;   A is the set of all $\epsilon$-chains between any element and $a$  And, so $A^c = \emptyset$ if $A$ was $\epsilon$-chainable (because A has to have a path from all elements to a, for this to be true, the complement wouldn't have anything in it)  Leaving only $A$ as the remaining clopen set  Does this make any sense? Or should an alternative be used, and how to formalize it.  Thanks. I just bought a new MTB and am planning to change my previous MTB into a Road Bike.   How do I do it? What kind of parts do I need to change or add or remove?  I am not looking to for a full conversion into specialised road bike. But like the answers are suggesting, I am looking for a bridge between commuter or road bike. My majors concerns to be met are:   Should be fast enough to compete with road racers over short distance Should be light as a road  Should be as close as possible in as cheap as possible. How does \fontsize{}{} work? With the package anyfontsize I can use the command \fontsize{}{}. But the second argument seems to be without any effect. I read  that it is related to the line space. It doesn't work.  \documentclass{article} \usepackage{anyfontsize} \begin{document}  {\fontsize{1cm}{1cm}\selectfont First test : I need to put some text here.}  \bigskip  {\fontsize{1cm}{2cm}\selectfont Second test : I need to put some text here --- does it work?}  \end{document}     Any clue? What's the best way to protect your house from Endermen stealing your walls? Indecomposable limit ordinals A limit ordinal $\gamma&gt;0$ is said to be indecomposable iff $\nexists\alpha,\beta&lt;\gamma$ such that $\alpha+\beta=\gamma$.  In view of this definition, I’m trying to prove the equivalence of the following statements for limit ordinals $\gamma$:  (1) $\gamma$ is indecomposable.  (2) $\alpha+\gamma=\gamma$ $\forall\alpha&lt;\gamma$.  (3) $\gamma=\omega^\alpha$ for some $\alpha\in\mathrm{ON}$.  I’ve been able to get $(1)\implies(2)$ and $(3)\implies(1)$, but I have nothing more than scratch work for $(2)\implies(3)$.  Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm looking at buying a second-hand Mac, probably one that does not include an OS installation disk.  How can I scan it to make sure that it has not had security threats installed on it?  Is there a CD or DVD image I can boot it up with to perform this scan offline?  Edit: prospective machine would be a 2011- or 2012-vintage MacBook Pro.  Also note that I don't have reliable access to high-speed internet, so solutions that involve downloading 5GB over the Internet are not ideal.  For others, though,  may be helpful. How to remove the "No front page content has been created yet." message from the front page? I only want blocks on the homepage. Because I don't have any nodes, and I want to keep the homepage as /node I am getting a "No front page content has been created yet." message on my page.  How do I get around this? Changing the size of the mouse pointer in Ubuntu MATE 18.04 does not work Retrieving the last record in each group - MySQL Language specific settings for field formatters I've created a custom field formatter widget for numeric fields. The formatter has A LOT of settings to customize the visual output of that number, to whatever designers/marketing wants (adding a lot of HTML markup, with[out] leading/trailing zeros, zeros as dash, one or two fractions, rounding, prefixes/infixes/suffixes,... ).  Some of those settings are language-dependant though, so I'd like to enter different formatter settings in  /en/admin/structure/types/manage/MY_CONTENT_TYPE/display /de/admin/structure/types/manage/MY_CONTENT_TYPE/display /fr/admin/structure/types/manage/MY_CONTENT_TYPE/display  I've noticed that there is a $langcode parameter in   but I don't know how to make  language-aware.  Is it possible at all to have language-specific settings in a field formatter? If yes, how to I store and retrieve those settings in the correct language? How to kill all process with given name? Can a virtualized machine have the CPU and RAM resources of multiple underlying physical machines? We are studying implementing some virtualized servers here, but we don't know what will be better suitable for us. Some folks are saying better have two huge servers, and others are saying have like a ten middle-end servers.  We have a legacy Visual Foxpro application, which nowadays run on Dual Xeon E5405 @ 2GHz and 16Gb of RAM. The currently server its getting too slow due the number of active users and process running on it. Virtualizing this server will give us the benefit of an faster disaster recovery.  So the question is, having like ten physical servers running at 1.7GHz and 4Gb of RAM, we could virtualize one server into 4 machines, and have one virtualized server running at 6.8GHz and 16Gb of memory? If yes, there is some how if one machine stops, automatically manage this virtual machine to another one, and execute the appropriate maintenance on it, and later back to it again?