Comment On Almost Counting Past 100

CSummers:

The *1 is to ensure that the count is converted to a numeric type.

derula:

CSummers:

The *1 is to ensure that the count is converted to a numeric type.

They should use +0 instead, everyone knows that addition is faster than multiplication! D'oh!

SR:

Screw the employment laws, this is worthy of flogging the guilty party up and down the street (finishing at the unemployment office

Attempt #2

trev:

derula:

CSummers:

The *1 is to ensure that the count is converted to a numeric type.

They should use +0 instead, everyone knows that addition is faster than multiplication! D'oh!

But this is JavaScript, you are going to end up concatenating instead of adding.

spxza:

SR:

Screw the employment laws, this is worthy of flogging the guilty party up and down the street (finishing at the unemployment office

Attempt #2

Only flogging? How nice of you. I'm thinking of worse treatement.

Seriously, how does someone come up with this crap, when it can be done with a one liner?

NoAstronomer:

frits:

After days of struggling, this was the first thing that "worked", so they stuck with it.

Modern software development described in one sentence.

Jugis:

Hey, I'm not a javascript programmer, but I do know that the first character of a JS string has index 0, so if the labels are of the form

Item #2 or Item #100

then isn't the code actually bungling the parsing? For instance, when label = "Item #2", the space is at position (label.length-3), so the body of the else is executed, leading to:

count = label.substring(label.length - 2) * 1
count = "#2" * 1
count = ??? // Maybe JS parses "#2" to 2?

and for label = "Item #10", the space is now further away at (label.length-4) so the parsing would be:

count = "10" * 1

So the if body is skipped every time the label is "valid" (of the form "Item #xxx" where x is never absent). I suspect they intended to either use the form "Item xxx" or else check for the position of hash symbol rather than the space.

adiener:

The multiplication by 1 makes it even better.

  given label="Item #1", label.charAt(label.length - 2) returns '#'

  given label="Item #12", label.charAt(label.length - 2) returns '1'

  given label="Item #123", label.charAt(label.length - 2) returns '2'

label.charAt(label.length - 2) == ' '

  given label="Item #1", label.substring(label.length - 2) returns "#1"

  given label="Item #12", label.substring(label.length - 2) returns "12"

  given label="Item #123", label.substring(label.length - 2) returns "23"

setCount: function(label) { 

        var layer; 

        var count; 

        var pos;

        pos = label.pos(' ');

        layer = label.substring(0, pos++); 

        count = label.substring(pos) * 1; 

        if (this[layer] < count) { 

                this[layer] = count ; 

        } 

}

Jugis:

  given label="Item #1", label.substring(label.length - 2) returns "#1"

  given label="Item #12", label.substring(label.length - 2) returns "12"

  given label="Item #123", label.substring(label.length - 2) returns "23"

Patrick:

What language is that, anyway?

Jugis:

I agree with your description of indexing and ".length" but I do not believe the code as a whole is correct. Firstly, the author (and probably most readers) believes that the body of the "if" computes "count" for single digit numbers and the body of the "else" corresponds to two digit numbers. I think there's a logic bug that's causing ALL labels to be processed with the "else" body.

Is it not the case that:

  given label="Item #1", label.charAt(label.length - 2) returns '#'

  given label="Item #12", label.charAt(label.length - 2) returns '1'

  given label="Item #123", label.charAt(label.length - 2) returns '2'

Patrick:

Maybe they should pass the labels through an MD5 generator. Or better yet, use GUIDs.

Randolph Carter:

Patrick:

Maybe they should pass the labels through an MD5 generator. Or better yet, use GUIDs.

Don't leave out the XML. It won't be truly enterprise-grade until there are many multiple levels of transforms and reformatting, with hidden nested schemas and DTDs.

Anon:

The obvious solution here would be to use a regular expressions to extract the numeric part.

Anon:

nobody could need more than 1000 labels, could they?

   setCount: function(label) {

           var layer = label.substring(0, label.length - 2);

           var count = label.substring(label.length -1) * 1;

           if (this[layer] < count) {

                   this[layer] = count ;

           }

   }

Bellinghman:

...the '#' has been spuriously added to the report by Mark B, under the impression that one has always to use '#' to warn readers that a number is coming.

Coyne:

Sigh. TRWTF is that people that write this kind of code are usually annoyed when their assumptions are falsified and the program fails. As in, "What do you mean the user added more than 99 labels? Why would they do that?"

...and then, more often than not, their proposed "solution" is to limit the number of labels to 99.

Outtascope:

Patrick:

What language is that, anyway?

It isn't a language. It's Javascript.

Outtascope:

Patrick:

What language is that, anyway?

It isn't a language. It's Javascript.

Patrick:

but the important question is, what happens when it gets ovER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!![...]?

Herby:

and if you had a number less than 10, it returned a single digit (can't have leading zeros you know!). The end result was that page numbers would have the sequence:
... 97, 98, 99, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 110, 111.

Bellinghman:

[…] the labels actually read Item 1, Item 12, etc., and that the '#' has been spuriously added to the report by Mark B, under the impression that one has always to use '#' to warn readers that a number is coming.

snoofle:

[…] It's highly likely that the great great great great great […] grandson wrote all the mm/dd/yy y2k date code too!

Zylon:

It's funny how when working with physical tools, when you push them beyond their design limits and they break, you blame the person using it for being stupid.

But push a software tool beyond its limits, and oh no, now when it breaks it's suddenly the tool's fault!

Bah.