Sounds like quite a lot of work for little benefit. Using a straightforward sequence or email address as an identifier is much more sane and I'd migrate to that. Maybe just keep the old membership id as a field in the database and use it if present for old members. Don't issue any more old membership ids.

On Sun, 7 Feb 2021 at 12:39, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:

On Sun, Feb 07, 2021 at 11:53:24AM +0000, Phil Thane wrote:

...

Hello,

Anyone know if this exists or would anyone like to create it? (Not seq command, won't do what I want, I don't think). Read on...

I'm the membership sec of GOBA (Great Ouse Boating Assoc). We've just launched a new website using WP and sundry plugins. Central to things is Paid Memberships Pro which allows new members to join or existing ones to renew online. PMP allows users to specify their own username and password. BUT, under the previous regime and going back to the dark ages (pre internet) GOBA assigned each member a membership number, and just to make life more difficult didn't just use a straightforward sequence. Each 'number' is actually alphanumeric based on initial letter of the member's surname, then the next number available in that sequence. Thus I'm T596 and there is one person after me T597 but in the S list there are over 1200 (too many Smiths).

Two things make this a nuisance. First, we imported data from the previous system into PMP and had to choose a field to be the key ID. PMP would prefer this to be an email address but many members joined long before they had email and have never updated their details to include it. The one field they all did have was a membership number, so for all previous members Username = Membership number. Secondly GOBA is full of people who don't like change, they want us to convert new members with their personalised username into the 'traditional' system.

That's do-able via the WP dashboard but a bit of a pain. Finding the last number issued on a particular sequence involves inspired guesswork and wildcard searching. I believe a previous membership sec had an app on an ancient version of Windows that kept a log of the last issued numbers so he just input an initial letter and got back the number. Obviously I'd have to find 26 last issued numbers manually to get started but subsequently it'd be a lot easier.

So, anyone know of a Linux app that would help? Or is anyone able to script something? It doesn't have to be pretty, just idiot-proof. Or is there anyone with infinite patience who'd like to teach an old dog a new trick? My experience of scripting and programming is very limited and has rarely ended well but I'll give it a go with some advice.

So what do you want the program to actually do? Is the requirement simply a search for a number in a database of some sort, or what?

-- Chris Green

---

main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

On Sun, Feb 07, 2021 at 02:30:17PM +0000, mick wrote:

On Sun, 7 Feb 2021 11:53:24 +0000 Phil Thane phil@pthane.co.uk allegedly wrote:

...

Two things make this a nuisance. First, we imported data from the previous system into PMP and had to choose a field to be the key ID. PMP would prefer this to be an email address but many members joined long before they had email and have never updated their details to include it. The one field they all did have was a membership number, so for all previous members Username = Membership number. Secondly GOBA is full of people who don't like change, they want us to convert new members with their personalised username into the 'traditional' system.

Oh good grief. Surely members now have email addresses. Those without must be in the minority now. How the hell do they function in today's world without an email address?

But people don't like revealing them. I manage our our private road, even after several years of asking for E-Mail addresses I have fewer than half of them.

On Sun, Feb 07, 2021 at 04:06:59PM +0000, mick wrote:

On Sun, 7 Feb 2021 15:03:25 +0000 Chris Green cl@isbd.net allegedly wrote:

...

...

But people don't like revealing them. I manage our our private road, even after several years of asking for E-Mail addresses I have fewer than half of them.

Kind of pointless having an email address if you don't give it anyone.

It's like asking someone to deliver something to your home without telling them where you live.

I don't disagree but it's what I've found. Lots of poeple don't hand their phone number out except to family.

On Sun, 7 Feb 2021 16:09:49 +0000 Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk allegedly wrote:

I'm guessing Phil wants to keep people happy and would anticipate a bit of a pile on if people couldn't have their old alphanumeric system. However, if Phil can say it's not possible to do that, that might be the most diplomatic option. (Missing out the part where you say change is not always a bad thing and may help us to keep costs down etc.)

Good point Bev.

Phil could stress the cost-saving element and suggest that unless members moved with the times then subscriptions would have to rise to cover (ever increasing) postage costs, stationery, etc. (Not to mention the ridiculous waste of manual effort).

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

<snip>

...

...

...

Oh good grief. Surely members now have email addresses. Those without must be in the minority now. How the hell do they function in today's world without an email address?

But people don't like revealing them. I manage our our private road, even after several years of asking for E-Mail addresses I have fewer than half of them.

Not revealing an email address to an individual is one thing. Not giving it when an organisation asks for it so it can, idk, send you things you might want to know ...

Or, of course (what many people fear) endless junk mail.

But they have (I just checked) 3000 members, give or take presumably. They're not a charity but they will have obligations to those members and not sending junk mail is, I'm guessing, likely to one of them.

I do think those that can be need nudging into the 21st c.

Bev

On 07/02/2021 17:06, Bev Nicolson wrote:

<snip>

...

Or, of course (what many people fear) endless junk mail.

But they have (I just checked) 3000 members, give or take presumably. They're not a charity but they will have obligations to those members and not sending junk mail is, I'm guessing, likely to one of them.

Indeed, not sending junk mail should be a responsibility for an organisation, but....

I use personalised emails for companies and groups.  E.g. communicating with BigCompany, I would put my email address as steve-BigCompany@somewhere.invalid.  Communicating with Bevs Fan Club I would use say steve-bevfanclub@somewhere.invalid.

In both situations I have ended up receiving spam.  Occasionally a reputable company will send spam and you can usually opt out.

A non-reputable company won't care about your details.

I've had reputable companies leak my email address to spam lists, either via data breaches and hacking attempts, or possibly by someone in the company getting a computer virus that harvests email addresses.

I've had spam from fan-clubs sent by members of the fan club.  This has happened because a member has had a virus which has spammed everyone in their address book.

I've had my email address harvested from a member of a fan club whose infected computer has put my email address on a list of email addresses to spam.

All of the above have happened to me.

This is a reason why some people don't like sharing email addresses.

Because of my system, I can simply dump an email address that gets spammed into the junk, and obviously I have spam filters, but not everyone is so tech-savvy.

Steve

On Mon, 8 Feb 2021 17:51:47 +0000 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk allegedly wrote:

On 07/02/2021 14:30, mick wrote:

...

Oh good grief. Surely members now have email addresses. Those without must be in the minority now. How the hell do they function in today's world without an email address?

Making some sweeping assumptions here, but I'm guessing that most boat owners aren't young, are reasonably well off and possibly set in their ways and successfully and possibly influential.

I would suspect that people like that could manage perfectly well without, and I know there are  people who would refuse to have an email address for various reasons.

And at one time such people might have refused to have a phone number too. Sooner or later they realise that it is in their own interests to adjust, or miss out.

Being "old, reasonably well off and possibly influential" is no excuse for being unreasonable. On the contrary, such people need to realise that the world does not revolve around them and that /they/ need to change their habits if they wish to function in a modern society, and gain its benefits. How do they manage utility bills? Bank or insurance correspondence? Government (local and national) contacts? Medical contacts? etc.

My own mother is 88 years old and has no email. She has to be assisted (by one of my brothers) in all her electronic correspondence with a wide range of service providers. Without that assistance things would start to degrade and eventually fail. She is not bloody minded (like the "old, reasonably well off and possibly influential", she just doesn't understand the concept of email. She has said that she thinks it might be useful but "it's a bit too late for me to start now".

Phil is designing and building a web site for the GOBA. Members will be expected to interact with that website and gain the benefits of its existence. So the assumption must be that they are not completely devoid of connected competence. Like you, I am making an assumption here, but I am assuming that some of the members are just "set in their ways" (a euphemism for "bloody minded"). Being "potentially influential" (whatever that means) is no excuse for being difficult.

And for how long is the rest of society meant to cater for those of its members who refuse (rather than those who are simply unable) to avail themselves of the benefits of modern communication? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Do we wait until all the outliers are dead? At some time there has to be a point at which we say, "sorry, but to continue here you must meet our requirements or face inordinate additional costs". My point is simply that at the moment when Phil (the membership secretary) is designing a new portal for the members /they/ should be flexible - or miss out.

...

Maintaining the status quo looks ridiculously, and unnecessarily, complicated. If you are the membership secretary you must be in a position to "encourage" change to something much more sensible. The obvious membership ID would be an email address. Push for that.

And I also suspect that rich, influential, stuck in their ways people might push back quite forcefully at that suggestion!  Hence the original request!

Let 'em push. I would. And I would resist.

(Full disclosure - I am 67 years of age, moderately well off and some people (mostly younger than me, and particularly my grandchildren, consider me set in my ways). Whether I am influential or not is entirely debatable.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, 8 Feb 2021 20:25:21 +0000 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk allegedly wrote:

Do you have a boat though? ;-)

Steve (No boat)

Nope. :-)

(Totally OT - and apologies to the list for the waste of electrons. Moderators may decide to react to my responses the way I react to "entitled" supposedly "influential" persons.)

Mick

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

[debate on club members not disclosing email address etc]

This has gone into the weeds a bit. According to the original message, all of the original club members have an account that was imported onto the website database, and the userid is their quirky membership id. Presumably the club has enough contact information for them to get their subs paid. Can’t see any reason to worry about them. They can presumably update their user accounts themselves to add one if they change their minds.

For new members (if I lived closer, maybe I’d join!), the form asks for both a userid and an email address, and all fields on the (short) form appear to be mandatory. So they have to provide a real one, or will put in a fake one :-), therefore the website will either work fine for them or they’ll need to contact the membership secretary to get their subs paid. Mildly inconvenient but not a huge problem.

Anyway, hello. I’m a relatively new list member though I’ve been using unix and linux (at work & at home) for decades.

Sounds challenging on a number of levels. :)

I have been the Chair of a similar local activity group that could also be seen as having some members who might have an arguably similar reluctance to change. That group has less than a tenth of the members under discussion in this thread, but I had a similar experience when I first took on the role. Our committee had to spend a good proportion of time on applying some data protection principles to the annual data that had been collected the exact same way for many years (and a complete copy of which was being sent back to all group members almost in its entirety).

In the end, as well as stopping the mass mailouts of personal data, we migrated the group away from using the postal addresses that had historically been collected as a primary identifier but were no longer really necessary, and switched over to email addresses, which are far more practical for the modern group activities.

I found that the majority of reluctance to provide email addresses faded away when I spent some time explaining that, as Chair, I felt I had a responsibility not only to the current membership, but also to the volunteers on the committee and - crucially - the future membership and future committees. I found that when you describe the extra voluntary effort that is required to maintain such historical data / processes (e.g. dealing with members by post / telephone, rather then email), and then ask complainants either directly or indirectly, whether they feel strongly enough about the decision to volunteer to be membership secretary and take on that role, then those members can be brought round. I've also found that whilst some members can be extremely vocal, often the vast silent majority think very differently, even if you haven't heard from them.

If I was on such a committee that considered the move to a new primary identifier was the best move for both the group and the volunteers on the committee, but it seemed like there may be a chance of disapproval from some, I would likely put the decision to the members and ask them to vote on it at the AGM, after explaining the pros and cons of what that decision would entail. If you have a vote of approval from the membership, I think that gives you a mandate to proceed with what is best for that group.

My experience of committees is that to get anything done, it often requires as much effort put into convincing and explaining to other conservative members, as much as it is time spent implementing. It's often the case that volunteer committee members don't really want to have to deal with this additional pain, and that can ensure that groups remain stuck with out-of-date processes, until something happens which forces a change.

Good luck with it all, anyway. I hope your members appreciate your diligence!

Peter.

P.S. In the end, we only had one couple who remained anti-email (and internet in general). Their experience didn't really change much though - we continue to accept printed out membership forms, so we

On 08/02/2021 09:40, Nev Young wrote:

On 07/02/2021 11:53, Phil Thane wrote:

...

Hello,

Anyone know if this exists or would anyone like to create it? (Not seq command, won't do what I want, I don't think). Read on...

I'm the membership sec of GOBA (Great Ouse Boating Assoc). We've just launched a new website using WP and sundry plugins. Central to things is Paid Memberships Pro which allows new members to join or existing ones to renew online. PMP allows users to specify their own username and password. BUT, under the previous regime and going back to the dark ages (pre internet) GOBA assigned each member a membership number, and just to make life more difficult didn't just use a straightforward sequence. Each 'number' is actually alphanumeric based on initial letter of the member's surname, then the next number available in that sequence. Thus I'm T596 and there is one person after me T597 but in the S list there are over 1200 (too many Smiths).

That's do-able via the WP dashboard but a bit of a pain. Finding the last number issued on a particular sequence involves inspired guesswork and wildcard searching. I believe a previous membership sec had an app on an ancient version of Windows that kept a log of the last issued numbers so he just input an initial letter and got back the number. Obviously I'd have to find 26 last issued numbers manually to get started but subsequently it'd be a lot easier.

You can make things easier for yourself by only having one number list. So if you have 3124 members the next new member would be <1st initial>3125. After all, you probably already have voids in the existing lists from members leaving. It would also make things easier when Miss Jones changes to Mrs Smith as the number part wont have to change.

Try this if you want. Not clever but it works. #! /bin/bash

cd ~ # <replace with your working directory> index=$(cat lastnumber.txt)

index=$(($index + 1)) echo "next number is " . $index echo $index > lastnumber.txt

Nev

I like Nev's solution because a) it's very simple b) it cunningly works around the problem and last but not least c) he didn't tell you that you don't want to do what you want to do.  :-)

Steve

On 08/02/2021 18:09, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:

On 07/02/2021 11:53, Phil Thane wrote:

...

Hello,

Anyone know if this exists or would anyone like to create it? (Not seq command, won't do what I want, I don't think). Read on...

I'm the membership sec of GOBA (Great Ouse Boating Assoc). We've just launched a new website using WP and sundry plugins. Central to things is Paid Memberships Pro which allows new members to join or existing ones to renew online. PMP allows users to specify their own username and password. BUT, under the previous regime and going back to the dark ages (pre internet) GOBA assigned each member a membership number, and just to make life more difficult didn't just use a straightforward sequence. Each 'number' is actually alphanumeric based on initial letter of the member's surname, then the next number available in that sequence. Thus I'm T596 and there is one person after me T597 but in the S list there are over 1200 (too many Smiths).

Two things make this a nuisance. First, we imported data from the previous system into PMP and had to choose a field to be the key ID. PMP would prefer this to be an email address but many members joined long before they had email and have never updated their details to include it. The one field they all did have was a membership number, so for all previous members Username = Membership number. Secondly GOBA is full of people who don't like change, they want us to convert new members with their personalised username into the 'traditional' system.

That's do-able via the WP dashboard but a bit of a pain. Finding the last number issued on a particular sequence involves inspired guesswork and wildcard searching. I believe a previous membership sec had an app on an ancient version of Windows that kept a log of the last issued numbers so he just input an initial letter and got back the number. Obviously I'd have to find 26 last issued numbers manually to get started but subsequently it'd be a lot easier.

So, anyone know of a Linux app that would help? Or is anyone able to script something? It doesn't have to be pretty, just idiot-proof. Or is there anyone with infinite patience who'd like to teach an old dog a new trick? My experience of scripting and programming is very limited and has rarely ended well but I'll give it a go with some advice.

What format are the codes in the list in? E.g. plain text unformatted list, one per line?

Do you have access to Excel, or a Spreadsheet?

If you have access to Excel, a quick bit of Visual Basic for Applications and/or some embedded code & formulas could fix it for you.

Once you have the Max for a particular letter, simply save them in a spreadsheet

1 row, 26 columns -> A    B    C    D 21  5    12  35

etc

Steve

A python3 program

#!/usr/bin/env python3

AtoZ = ["A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H",         "I", "J", "K", "L", "M", "N", "O", "P",         "Q", "R", "S", "T", "U", "V", "W", "X",         "Y", "Z"]

MaxDictionary = {}

for i in AtoZ:     MaxDictionary[i] = 0

#for i in AtoZ: #    print (i, MaxDictionary[i]) # #print ("---------")

SerialFile = open("SerNo.txt", "r") for ALine in SerialFile:     char = ALine[0]     NumAsString = ALine[1:]     NumAsInt = int(NumAsString)     #print( char, NumAsString, NumAsInt, ALine)

CurrentMax = MaxDictionary[char]     if NumAsInt > CurrentMax:         MaxDictionary[char] = NumAsInt         #print ("Max for " + char + " now " + str(NumAsInt))

for i in AtoZ:     print (i, MaxDictionary[i])

###### reading a file SerNo.txt

e.g. T465 U74 V36 W456 X585 Y86 Z4 M226 N345 O345 P3356 Q447 R2 S67 T2 U562 V34

An example SerNo.txt file https://pastebin.com/t06a3M1c

The python3 file DecodeSerNo.py https://pastebin.com/yRFxdAmZ

With both files named as above in the current directory, simply run python3 DecodeSerNo.py

Hope that helps.

Steve