The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Many Unhappy Returns

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-14

Gavin continues work on the old C++ app he inherited. Today we get a delightful smattering of bad choices.

HRESULT CExAPI::GetPageCacheForFolder( IN  CEntryID *p_cio_Folder, OUT CPageCache **pp_PC )
{
	CEntryID *p_cio_Local = new CEntryID( this, p_cio_Folder );

	switch ( p_cio_Folder->m_uiType )
	{
		case EID_TYPE_EMPTY:
			return S_OK;
			break;
		case EID_TYPE_NORMAL :
			return GetPageCacheForNormalFolder(p_cio_Folder, pp_PC );
			break;
		case EID_TYPE_ADDRESSBOOK :
			return GetPageCacheForABFolder(p_cio_Folder, 0, pp_PC );
			break;
	}

	return S_OK;

	DeleteIfNotNULL( p_cio_Local );
}

14 comments - Last comment @ 11:13

Accessed Nulls

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-13

"The attached class connects to an Access database," writes Nicolai. That's always a good start for a WTF. Let's take a look.

public class ResultLoader {

	private static Logger sysLog = Logger.getLogger(ResultLoader.class);
	private static String url = "somePath";

	/**
	 * get the ResultTable from the Access database
	 * 
	 * @param tableName
	 * @return
	 */
	private static Table getResultTable(String tableName) {
		try {
			// create a new file with the path to the table
			File db = new File(url);
			// let Jackcess open the file and return a table
			return Database.open(db).getTable(tableName);
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		return null;
	}

	/**
	 * load result from DB
	 */
	public static void loadResult() {
		String tableName = "Result";
		Table resultTable = getResultTable(tableName);

		if (!resultTable.equals(null)) {
			Map<Integer, Float> yearConsumption = new HashMap<Integer, Float>();

			for (Map<String, Object> row : resultTable) {
				/*
				 *  [snip] does something with the table's rows
				 */
			}
			Result result = new Result(00, new Date(), consumptions);
		} else {
			sysLog.info("There is no data object in the Access Database!");
		}
	}
}

15 comments - Last comment @ 2024-05-13

Reflect on Your Mistakes

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-09

While Java didn't invent putting a toString method in the base class of every object, it certainly made it mainstream. The nice thing about the method is that it allows you to turn any object into a string, though it's up to the implementor to decide what a good string representation is. But what if you want to ensure that the object you're handed is really and truly a string, not just something you can convert to a string?

teknopaul's co-worker found their own solution:

19 comments - Last comment @ 03:18

Suspicious Contents

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-07

While poring through some VB .Net code, John noticed some odd things in their datamodel. For example, a different process would scan files, and log any "suspicious" files into a database. The program John supported would then report on that data.

One of their classes had a property which looked like this:

17 comments - Last comment @ 2024-05-12

Spaced Out Replacement

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-06

You have some text, and need to replace every sequence of spaces with a single space. E.g., My text becomes My text. Now, if you're most of us, you ignore the famous quote and reach straight for regexes.

But Samuel's co-worker isn't most of us.

35 comments - Last comment @ 2024-05-08

Totally Valid

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-02

Greg's co-worker really wanted to make sure that a variable was correctly set to true or false. So they did this:

if (isValid == true)
{
	isValid = true;
}
else
{
	isValid = false;
}

28 comments - Last comment @ 2024-05-10

Metaception

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2024-05-01

Meta-programming- programs which generate programs- is a delightful hobby, but usually shouldn't be used in production code. Usually. I mean, if you're working in LISP, 90% of your program is going to be macros.

But if you're using PHP and JavaScript, there's good odds that someone you work with has decided to combine these two tastes together to create something nobody wants to taste.

26 comments - Last comment @ 2024-05-10

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