Calculating equal offsets of hole for irrigation pipe or wood: gap.pl

[J65nko]

During one of the corona lockdowns in 2020 I wrote a small Perl script to calculate evenly divided offsets for screws or nails. Later I also used it for irrigation pipe.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Getopt::Long;

# 
my $length = 0;
my $divisions = 0;
my $start = 0;
my $end = 0;

GetOptions(
   'length:i' => \$length,
   'divisions:i' => \$divisions,
   'start:i' => \$start,
   'end:i' => \$end
   ) or die usage();

sub usage{
print <<END;
Calculate equally spaced offset of holes in irrigation pipe
or of screws in piece of wood

   \$ \./gap.pl -length 100 -divisions=12 -start=2 -end=4

This will divide (100 - 2 - 4) in 12 equal parts and print the offsets 
END
exit(1);
}

&usage if ($length == 0) or ($divisions == 0);

my $increment;
my $position; 
my $counter = 0;

$position = $start;
$increment = ($length - $start - $end) / $divisions;


#---
print "\nLength\t\t: $length";
print "\nStart\t\t: $start";
print "\nEnd\t\t: $end";
print "\nDivisions\t: $divisions\n";
print "\nStart\t\t: $start";
print "\nIncrement\t: $increment";
print "\nLast\t\t: \($length - $end)\n";

while ($position < ($length - $end +1)) {
    $counter++;
    print "\n$counter\t$position";
    $position = $position + $increment;
}


print "\n";

Some examples of usage:

$ ./gap.pl

Calculate equally spaced offset of holes in irrigation pipe
or of screws in piece of wood

   $ ./gap.pl -length 100 -divisions=12 -start=2 -end=4

This will divide (100 - 2 - 4) in 12 equal parts and print the offsets

$ ./gap.pl -length 120 -s 6 -end 10 -div 10 

Length          : 120
Start           : 6
End             : 10
Divisions       : 10

Start           : 6
Increment       : 10.4
Last            : (120 - 10)

1       6
2       16.4
3       26.8
4       37.2
5       47.6
6       58
7       68.4
8       78.8
9       89.2
10      99.6
11      110

$ ./gap.pl -length 120 -s 6 -end 10 -div 15 

Length          : 120
Start           : 6
End             : 10
Divisions       : 15

Start           : 6
Increment       : 6.93333333333333
Last            : (120 - 10)

1       6
2       12.9333333333333
3       19.8666666666667
4       26.8
5       33.7333333333333
6       40.6666666666667
7       47.6
8       54.5333333333333
9       61.4666666666667
10      68.4
11      75.3333333333334
12      82.2666666666667
13      89.2
14      96.1333333333334
15      103.066666666667
16      110
$

Notice that you can shorten the command line options and that the '=' is optional.
I also don't round the offsets, that is left for the user to decide.

As a metric system user I pity the poor souls that have to figure these things out in inches and feet

[frcc]

Nice!