Forums
Today's a simple one. We've all seen code that relies too heavily on string concatenation and eschews useful methods like Join.
Nick L sends us this VB.Net example, written by a slew of mechanical engineers.
Juliano had this very non-WTF bit of PHP code:
if (!$path) {
//do stuff
} else {
//do other stuff
}
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 );
}
"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!");
}
}
}
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:
Comments explain a lot about our code. And sometimes, the comments explain more than the code itself.
Alastair found this lovely comment, which demonstrates an excellent, if confusing, understanding of a boolean "or":
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:
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.