The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Drak · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

DrCode:
Anonymous:

What is wrong with empty guid as a NULL-equivalent value for a value-type? How to say "undefined" in C# for Guid without using Empty?

Guid guid = null; // why not?

Because the compiler says:

U:\VSP\TextGuid\Form1.cs(77): Cannot convert null to 'System.Guid' because it is a value type
That's why they created Guid.Empty.

And that's also why you should never compare guids with == like mentioned by the original poster somewehere on the previous page. Thats what .Equals is for.

Drak

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
kalahari:
lower_case_with_underscores_rules! (EXCEPT_FOR_CONSTANTS)

I know a Ruby programmer when I see it!

GO RUBY!!!

This is also common in php (at least for the not object-oriented extensions).

IceFreak2000 · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

DrCode:
Anonymous:
What is wrong with empty guid as a NULL-equivalent value for a value-type? How to say "undefined" in C# for Guid without using Empty?

Guid guid = null; // why not?

System.Guid is a value type, and as such it cannot be null. Guid.Empty is provided as a static field for the same reasons that String.Empty is provided.

using System;

public class GuidTest {
    public static void Main() {
        Guid newGuid = new Guid();
        Guid emptyGuid = Guid.Empty;

        Console.WriteLine(newGuid.Equals(emptyGuid)); // True
    }
}

With C# 2.0 you will be able to specify a Guid as being nullable; for example:

using System;

public class GuidTest {
    public static void Main() {
        Guid? nullGuid = null;

        Console.WriteLine(nullGuid == null); // True
    }
}

DrCode:

BTW, I just have to chime in on the PascalCase thing. camelCase isEasyToRead evenWithWtfAcronyms, but_lower_case_with_underscores is easy to read, too. I was a C programmer for years, and thought camelCaseWasHideous, but after using Java for a while I realize it's just a matter of what you're used to.

PeopleWhoUsePascalCase (for methods) should be shot, however. Oh, and IWhat is the IDeal with IInterfaces IBeginning with I? Unless you're defining an interface for a type that can lead a slave rebellion and want to call it ISpartacus, please leave the gdHungarian where it belongs, in the ashheap of code history.

People who don't use Pascal Casing for methods in .NET languages (C#/VB.NET) should be shot, as that is what the defined naming conventions call for:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpgenref/html/cpconnamingguidelines.asp

See the section on Capitalization Styles for further information.

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

May I shamelessly advertise my website to generate GUIDs online? www.guidgen.com. [:$]

foxyshadis · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

FrostCat:
Man, that's totally the point of GUIDs--to create "references" that are more or less guaranteed not to collide with GUIDs created on other computers.
Note that if you are running Windows without a NIC, the last 6 bytes of any generated GUIDs using the MS tools that ship with Visual Studio will always be the same, so it's theoretically more likely to have collisions. Of course, when you're dealing with 10**<super>38</super>, what's a couple of orders of magnitude among friends?

Yeah, all ten of those networkless win32 programmers left. You might be interested to know that this behavior ended with NT4 (which always had the same last 6 bytes, card or not; they were the MAC address). It's been widely documented (even on this site!) so you might want to do a bit of research before you spout off the ol' legends. Here's an article on the topic, and even info on pros and cons of GUIDs (requires registration):
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=25862&seqNum=7&rl=1

The real wtf is this code a few lines down where he stores and retrieves the GUIDs by saving them in the registry, registering them as shell extensions for text files. $5 says they're there, and anyone who wants to know why explorer crashes when they click on a text file is told it must be a virus.

Quinnum · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

loneprogrammer:

For something like a database primary key, you don't have to use 128 bits unless you plan to have a database bigger than the universe, so using an autoincrement 32 bit number is fine.

The company I work is developing a huge white elephant which is supposed to be the be-all-and-end-all of healthcare applications (of course in the Indian development arm, and slowly rendering us 'legacy' developers obsolete as more of the functions get absorbed).

The database uses GUIDs as the primary keys (and by extension, the foreign keys) for every table. Of course, being for SQL server, you'd think they would use the GUID datatype? Nope, they use a 36 character length field, and store the literal string (e.g. 'F2A94419-12AD-4244-87F2-F1D7D21997F6'). That is a major WTF.

Of course, our legacy applications which we are still developing and maintain run about 20 times faster with more functionality, but hey, this is progress isn't it ? You get what you paid for, a .NET monstrosity which requires four servers to run.

DZ-Jay · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

kalahari:
lower_case_with_underscores_rules! (EXCEPT_FOR_CONSTANTS)

How about l33tcase?

public static int g3t0rd3r1DFr0mS3rV1ces0rd3r1d(Guid 0rD3r1d)

r00z!

dZ.

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I have people with the same ideas at work, who debug multithreaded apps on single proc desktops and yeah! I'm getting every build: "Everything worked on my computer, donno why quatro-proc production is in ruins... Must be a HW issue..."

Of course it's a HW issue! Just take away the extra 3 processors and see the application working fine!

Niels · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
<o:p></o:p>
Help me people! I just couldn't see the point of today's wtf... [:S]

The point is simply that he's wrapping integer IDs in GUIDs . GUIDs are unique, random, and non-sequential. However, this might be just some kind of hack to make 2 systems compatible, and IMHO is not a really big WTF. If you had two systems talking with each other, one using ints, and one using GUIDs, and you could not chance that, this would be a solution. Another solution would be to make an additional mapping table, but that would only make it even more complex.

IMHO it's ugly, but not a WTF.

Alex Papadimoulis · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Quinnum:

The company I work is developing a huge white elephant which is supposed to be the be-all-and-end-all of healthcare applications (of course in the Indian development arm, and slowly rendering us 'legacy' developers obsolete as more of the functions get absorbed).

The database uses GUIDs as the primary keys (and by extension, the foreign keys) for every table. ..

It's reasons like this that we need to have some sort of master/apprentece program for developing software. I'd bet a paycheck that this system falls apart in a year ... I'd even bet another paycheck that this system will be responsible for the deaths of quite a few people due to messed up perscriptions, appointments, or whatever.

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Guid.Empty is provided as a static field for the same reasons that String.Empty is provided.

C# strings are reference types, and therefore can be null. string.Empty is simply "". string.Empty != null.

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

wo-oo-wo-oo-wo-o-oo

guids!

good god!

what are they good for!

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
kalahari:
lower_case_with_underscores_rules! (EXCEPT_FOR_CONSTANTS)

I know a Ruby programmer when I see it!

GO RUBY!!!

This is also common in php (at least for the not object-oriented extensions).

I know, but Ruby also follows the convention of naming methods that change the receiving object with a ! suffix.

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

travisowens:
tag:
I love how I can recognize anything MS related or code written by MS programmers because their method and programme names always begin with upper case letters.

Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Haha, let's start yet ANOTHER off-topic thread! Let's bash this moron for not even knowing English! Raise your hand if you're an Object Orientated programmer.

Hmm, only one hand went up. Is that all?

christoofar · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Heh-- I'm the poster, and was surprised that people are more interested in CamelCase than using a Guid to store an int value.

The Guid is never used for the purpose of a Guid. The code I inherited uses these Guid<-->integer "translator" methods in several places to store an integer value (for some twisted reason) in a Guid "object".

There are Guid comparisons in the code (if (g1 == g2)), and, to my delight even a 'empty' Guid value

Guid gEmpty = new Guid(0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0);

for those special occasions where you need to set or validate a Guid with no value.

[:#]

Holy sh** Batman. Are we gonna protest for a a math lib for Guid in CLR 3.0?

public bool checkDivBySeven(Guid a)
{
return (a%7==0);
}

Maurits · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Guid.Empty is provided as a static field for the same reasons that String.Empty is provided.

C# strings are reference types, and therefore can be null. string.Empty is simply "". string.Empty != null.

Exactly... which is why I find myself typing things like

if (s != null && s != "") {
// do something w/ s
}

WTFer · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Maurits:
Anonymous:
Guid.Empty is provided as a static field for the same reasons that String.Empty is provided.

C# strings are reference types, and therefore can be null. string.Empty is simply "". string.Empty != null.

Exactly... which is why I find myself typing things like

if (s != null && s != "") {
// do something w/ s
}

I do the same thing, but I think once I read here that the really l33t people use
if(s!=null && s.length > 0){
//do something w /s
}
can someone confirm?

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Drak:

[...]

And that's also why you should never compare guids with == like mentioned by the original poster somewehere on the previous page. Thats what .Equals is for.

Drak

WTF difference???

From Guid code:


<FONT color=#1000a0>public</FONT> <FONT color=#1000a0>static</FONT> <FONT color=#006018>bool</FONT> operator ==(<FONT color=#006018>Guid</FONT> a, <FONT color=#006018>Guid</FONT> b)
{
      <FONT color=#1000a0>return</FONT> <FONT color=#006018>a</FONT>.<FONT color=#006018>Equals</FONT>(<FONT color=#006018>b</FONT>);
}

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Drak:

[...]

And that's also why you should never compare guids with == like mentioned by the original poster somewehere on the previous page. Thats what .Equals is for.

Drak

WTF difference???

From Guid code:


<FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#000000>public static bool operator ==(Guid a, Guid b)
{
      return a.Equals(b);
}
</FONT>

John Smallberries · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

christoofar:
Holy sh** Batman. Are we gonna protest for a a math lib for Guid in CLR 3.0?

public bool checkDivBySeven(Guid a)
{
return (a%7==0);
}

jeez....haven't you been following the PascalCase subthread?
that should be CheckDivBySeven.

Brendan Kidwell · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Foon:
Brendan Kidwell:
"Always," you say... Hmm, isn't consistency one of the keys to code readability? So what's wrong with them doing it that way if they're consistent about it?

The idea of a GUID is that it should be universally unique. No two GUIDs in the entire universe ought to be the same. Constructing a guid like this (id, 0,0,0,0,0 ,... ) undermines the whole idea of them. You might be using a GUID object, but it is not really a GUID at all.

I was talking about the great CamelCase debate, like everyone else in this thread. Move along, nothing to see here. :^)

dubwai · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
travisowens:

tag:
I love how I can recognize anything MS related or code written by MS programmers because their method and programme names always begin with upper case letters.

Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Haha, let's start yet ANOTHER off-topic thread! Let's bash this moron for not even knowing English! Raise your hand if you're an Object Orientated programmer.

Hmm, only one hand went up. Is that all?

'Orientated' is a perfectly acceptable word that is equivalent to 'oriented'. It's use is more common in Britain (where English originated.)

So, yeah, You don't usually hear the term Object-Orientated progamming but it definitely correct English.

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

WTFer:
Maurits:
Anonymous:
Guid.Empty is provided as a static field for the same reasons that String.Empty is provided.

C# strings are reference types, and therefore can be null.   string.Empty is simply "". string.Empty != null.

Exactly... which is why I find myself typing things like

if (s != null && s != "") {
    // do something w/ s
}

I do the same thing, but I think once I read here that the really l33t people use
if(s!=null && s.length > 0){
    //do something w /s
}
can someone confirm?

(s.Length > 0) works ~5 times faster than (s == "") or (s == String.Empty)

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Umm, no.
Even Microsoft's own naming guideline page treats lowerCamelCase as "real" CamelCase.

From:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpgenref/html/cpconcapitalizationstyles.asp
...

The correct link is:

Http://Msdn.Microsoft.Com/Library/Default.asp?Url=/Library/En-Us/Cpgenref/Html/CPConCapitalizationStyles.asp

mugs · 2005-06-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
FrostCat:

WTFer:
I have found GUIDs pretty useful when the objects are created by different people in different places (for example, a sales database where new records are added from an offline laptop and need to sync with the server). Specially if the objects or entities are build offline, so you know the ID's will never crash. Thus making this a WTF, since these GUIDs don't have the properties associated with real GUIDs and gives you no extra security against id crashing than using a simple autonumbered int.
--Mexican, really sorry for the broken english

Man, that's totally the point of GUIDs--to create "references" that are more or less guaranteed not to collide with GUIDs created on other computers.

Note that if you are running Windows without a NIC, the last 6 bytes of any generated GUIDs using the MS tools that ship with Visual Studio will always be the same, so it's theoretically more likely to have collisions. Of course, when you're dealing with 10**<SUPER>38</SUPER>, what's a couple of orders of magnitude among friends?

Hmm, interesting. So erm, what would this value be?
* Anonymous looks though all the GUID's and laughs at the poor developers without NIC's

What if you have two NICs?

2005-06-23 Reply Admin

And I'll bet a paycheck that it uses a flash interface.

Stan Rogers · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Anonymous:
travisowens:

tag:
I love how I can recognize anything MS related or code written by MS programmers because their method and programme names always begin with upper case letters.

Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Haha, let's start yet ANOTHER off-topic thread! Let's bash this moron for not even knowing English! Raise your hand if you're an Object Orientated programmer.

Hmm, only one hand went up. Is that all?

'Orientated' is a perfectly acceptable word that is equivalent to 'oriented'. It's use is more common in Britain (where English originated.)

So, yeah, You don't usually hear the term Object-Orientated progamming but it definitely correct English.

"Orientated" is in common use as an folk derivative of "orientation" (which has displaced "orient" as a noun meaning roughly the same thing as "attitude", where "orient" has remained the verb meaning "to adjust [ones] attitude in space"); it is not correct in this sense. It may become so through continued use. "Flammable" made the jump, and "irregardless" has lost the colloq tag in many dictionaries.

There is one generally accepted meaning for the verb "orientate", and that is to turn or face to the east (as for prayer). And that's where your assertion falls down -- those OO programmers who don't turn west to Redmond face the Sun [:)]

dubwai · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

Stan Rogers:
dubwai:
Anonymous:
travisowens:

tag:
I love how I can recognize anything MS related or code written by MS programmers because their method and programme names always begin with upper case letters.

Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Haha, let's start yet ANOTHER off-topic thread! Let's bash this moron for not even knowing English! Raise your hand if you're an Object Orientated programmer.

Hmm, only one hand went up. Is that all?

'Orientated' is a perfectly acceptable word that is equivalent to 'oriented'. It's use is more common in Britain (where English originated.)

So, yeah, You don't usually hear the term Object-Orientated progamming but it definitely correct English.

"Orientated" is in common use as an folk derivative of "orientation" (which has displaced "orient" as a noun meaning roughly the same thing as "attitude", where "orient" has remained the verb meaning "to adjust [ones] attitude in space"); it is not correct in this sense. It may become so through continued use. "Flammable" made the jump, and "irregardless" has lost the colloq tag in many dictionaries.

There is one generally accepted meaning for the verb "orientate", and that is to turn or face to the east (as for prayer). And that's where your assertion falls down -- those OO programmers who don't turn west to Redmond face the Sun [:)]

I make no claims as to the authority of this source, but this is my understanding of the controversy:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ori1.htm

My understanding is that many British people don't use 'oriented' at all and they think it's incorrect.

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the defintion for the transitive sense of orientate is literally a link to the word 'orient'.

Maybe I'm missing your point here but I think there are a lot of people that disagree with you on this.

Stan Rogers · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Stan Rogers:
dubwai:
Anonymous:
travisowens:

tag:
I love how I can recognize anything MS related or code written by MS programmers because their method and programme names always begin with upper case letters.

Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Haha, let's start yet ANOTHER off-topic thread! Let's bash this moron for not even knowing English! Raise your hand if you're an Object Orientated programmer.

Hmm, only one hand went up. Is that all?

'Orientated' is a perfectly acceptable word that is equivalent to 'oriented'. It's use is more common in Britain (where English originated.)

So, yeah, You don't usually hear the term Object-Orientated progamming but it definitely correct English.

"Orientated" is in common use as an folk derivative of "orientation" (which has displaced "orient" as a noun meaning roughly the same thing as "attitude", where "orient" has remained the verb meaning "to adjust [ones] attitude in space"); it is not correct in this sense. It may become so through continued use. "Flammable" made the jump, and "irregardless" has lost the colloq tag in many dictionaries.

There is one generally accepted meaning for the verb "orientate", and that is to turn or face to the east (as for prayer). And that's where your assertion falls down -- those OO programmers who don't turn west to Redmond face the Sun [:)]

I make no claims as to the authority of this source, but this is my understanding of the controversy:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ori1.htm

My understanding is that many British people don't use 'oriented' at all and they think it's incorrect.

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the defintion for the transitive sense of orientate is literally a link to the word 'orient'.

Maybe I'm missing your point here but I think there are a lot of people that disagree with you on this.

You are missing the point. Re-read the last sentence.

That being said, dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive, unlike style guides. They merely indicate how words are being used, not whether or not the usage is correct. I used to love the microprinted Oxford because I could prove that I never misspelled anything. (That is true in most cases, at least. The big Oxford will lend its opinion on usage from time to time; the editors don't always catch the comments in the citations.)

dubwai · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

Stan Rogers:
dubwai:
Stan Rogers:
dubwai:
Anonymous:
travisowens:

tag:
I love how I can recognize anything MS related or code written by MS programmers because their method and programme names always begin with upper case letters.

Now you've just typed a WTF as CamelCase is the preferred coding standard of Object Orientated Languages.... Java coders will (and should) type their method names the same way.

Haha, let's start yet ANOTHER off-topic thread! Let's bash this moron for not even knowing English! Raise your hand if you're an Object Orientated programmer.

Hmm, only one hand went up. Is that all?

'Orientated' is a perfectly acceptable word that is equivalent to 'oriented'. It's use is more common in Britain (where English originated.)

So, yeah, You don't usually hear the term Object-Orientated progamming but it definitely correct English.

"Orientated" is in common use as an folk derivative of "orientation" (which has displaced "orient" as a noun meaning roughly the same thing as "attitude", where "orient" has remained the verb meaning "to adjust [ones] attitude in space"); it is not correct in this sense. It may become so through continued use. "Flammable" made the jump, and "irregardless" has lost the colloq tag in many dictionaries.

There is one generally accepted meaning for the verb "orientate", and that is to turn or face to the east (as for prayer). And that's where your assertion falls down -- those OO programmers who don't turn west to Redmond face the Sun [:)]

I make no claims as to the authority of this source, but this is my understanding of the controversy:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ori1.htm

My understanding is that many British people don't use 'oriented' at all and they think it's incorrect.

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the defintion for the transitive sense of orientate is literally a link to the word 'orient'.

Maybe I'm missing your point here but I think there are a lot of people that disagree with you on this.

You are missing the point. Re-read the last sentence.

No, I didn't miss that. I disagree with it.

CKT · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

Autoinc numbers as DB keys have their own issues. While GUIDs are big and bulky and may cause DB indexing and fetching to take longer than really necessary, you are guaranteed that your keys are 'non-continguous' which gives you all sorts of nice flexibility that the 'continuous keyspaces' that autoincs produce don't have.

dubwai · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

CKT:

Autoinc numbers as DB keys have their own issues. While GUIDs are big and bulky and may cause DB indexing and fetching to take longer than really necessary, you are guaranteed that your keys are 'non-continguous' which gives you all sorts of nice flexibility that the 'continuous keyspaces' that autoincs produce don't have.

Flexibility in order to do what?

Maurits · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Flexibility in order to do what?

ORDER BY NewID()
for example. Non-contiguous GUID's allow for this very good pseudorandom ordering of arbitrary SELECTs. (ORDER BY RAND() doesn't work because RAND() takes the same value for all rows)

dubwai · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

Maurits:
dubwai:
Flexibility in order to do what?

ORDER BY NewID()
for example. Non-contiguous GUID's allow for this very good pseudorandom ordering of arbitrary SELECTs. (ORDER BY RAND() doesn't work because RAND() takes the same value for all rows)

OK, I can count the number of times I've needed to do that on zero fingers. If I needed to do that I probably wouldn't do it in the DB either. It definitely doesn't seem worth the effort or cost. Any other things this helps with?

Maurits · 2005-06-24 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Maurits:
dubwai:
Flexibility in order to do what?

ORDER BY NewID()
for example. Non-contiguous GUID's allow for this very good pseudorandom ordering of arbitrary SELECTs. (ORDER BY RAND() doesn't work because RAND() takes the same value for all rows)

OK, I can count the number of times I've needed to do that on zero fingers. If I needed to do that I probably wouldn't do it in the DB either. It definitely doesn't seem worth the effort or cost. Any other things this helps with?

You don't need it - but I do. I've had requests to send out two subtly different marketing pieces to randomly selected slices of our current customers. The easiest way for me to do that was to do SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT * FROM Customers ORDER BY NEWID()
Leaving the default order would have defaulted to the primary key - in my case, an identity field - which would send one of the marketing pieces to all customers older than the median age, and one to all the customers newer than the median age.

dubwai · 2005-06-28 Reply Admin

Maurits:
dubwai:

Maurits:
dubwai:
Flexibility in order to do what?

ORDER BY NewID()
for example. Non-contiguous GUID's allow for this very good pseudorandom ordering of arbitrary SELECTs. (ORDER BY RAND() doesn't work because RAND() takes the same value for all rows)

OK, I can count the number of times I've needed to do that on zero fingers. If I needed to do that I probably wouldn't do it in the DB either. It definitely doesn't seem worth the effort or cost. Any other things this helps with?

You don't need it - but I do. I've had requests to send out two subtly different marketing pieces to randomly selected slices of our current customers. The easiest way for me to do that was to do SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT * FROM Customers ORDER BY NEWID()
Leaving the default order would have defaulted to the primary key - in my case, an identity field - which would send one of the marketing pieces to all customers older than the median age, and one to all the customers newer than the median age.

OK but there are other solutions that don't queer-up the data model. My point was if this is the only thing that this is good for, I remain unconvinced that it's a good idea. The other thing about that solution that comes to mind is that you are guaranteed to get the same 'random' sample each time you do the query which may or may not be a good thing.

Steve O. · 2005-06-30 Reply Admin

Just curious here. What are you going to do when you overflow the 32 bit integer variable with the data from 128 bit integer during this conversion?

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