The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

John Bigboote · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

On a long enough time scale, I guess ALL variables are temporary.

Kudos on the totally impenetrable variable names.

Maurits · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

i = Integer...
s = String...
a = ???

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

a = Asinine [;)]

Kodi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:

They weren't declared, and Option Explicit was on, so it just didn't make sense.

Buried behind three levels of include files in the footer, Gavin finally found temp.inc ...

What an oxmoron ! Some one smart enough to use option explict but dumb enough to include all that crap in every page. [8o|]

allanc · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

See, that's genius. It will save several seconds of programmer time over the course of the project, and the only cost is the extra memory it takes to store those variables, the extra clock cycles needed to set them up, the loss of clarity from hiding the variable definitions, and the extra hours of programmer time needed maintain it.

--AC

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Maurits:
i = Integer...
s = String...
a = ???

This brings back good old FORTRAN memories:

IMPLICIT REAL*8 A-H,O-Z

Ah, those were the days...

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Kodi:
Alex Papadimoulis:

They weren't declared, and Option Explicit was on, so it just didn't make sense.

Buried behind three levels of include files in the footer, Gavin finally found temp.inc ...

What an oxmoron ! Some one smart enough to use option explict but dumb enough to include all that crap in every page. [8o|]

Isn't "option explicit" kind of an oxymoron itself?

- Sumit.

Charles Nadolski · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Maybe every function used every single one of these temporary variables, thereby reducing the overhead for each function :D Also, they can be used to pass key information throughout the program... Look ma! No parameters!

mizhi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

I recently saw something like this with some C-code I inherited. I wound up rewriting the entire program, mostly out of principle. In any case, there was one header file, used to include externs that were defined in the other implementation files. No function prototypes, just extern declarations, and a shitload of global variables.

To be fair, the guy was just learning C and this was his first major project in the language; I made several of the same mistakes when I first learned C a loooong time ago. I still marvel at the fact that he figured out how to use externs and pointer arithmetic, but not the preprocessor, or function prototypes.

Matt B · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Include files in any language are the work of the devil.

Charles Nadolski · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

mizhi:
I recently saw something like this with some C-code I inherited. I wound up rewriting the entire program, mostly out of principle. In any case, there was one header file, used to include externs that were defined in the other implementation files. No function prototypes, just extern declarations, and a shitload of global variables.

To be fair, the guy was just learning C and this was his first major project in the language; I made several of the same mistakes when I first learned C a loooong time ago. I still marvel at the fact that he figured out how to use externs and pointer arithmetic, but not the preprocessor, or function prototypes.

Pointer arithmetic is a WTF in and of itself. Works great in assembly, but puts you in a world of hurt in C++. How he learned extern is amazing... he might have just been dumping keywords until one compiled properly.

Also, were you guys using Visual Studio? If you use any of the wizards, they almost *force* you into using .h/.cpp files and prototypes. I can't even imagine how a GUI would have been implemented.

Mike R · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Maurits:
i = Integer...
s = String...
a = ???

a = Array, presumably. This guy must have taken "how to write unmaintanable code" literally.

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

WTF is wrong with pointer arithmetic? Just because people abuse it to create WTFs doesn't mean that it is a WTF. Same applies to VB, etc. Another clichè comes to mind: Don't use it, if you don't mean it :) It doesn't solve all the world problems, but makes some of them easier to solve.

Oh, just to finish with a last clichè, since I'm on a roll here: Guns don't kill people, people kill people (with guns).

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

I was thinking a=Any

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

It is probably inspired by the "Hungarian notation".

mizhi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Charles Nadolski:

Pointer arithmetic is a WTF in and of itself. Works great in assembly, but puts you in a world of hurt in C++. How he learned extern is amazing... he might have just been dumping keywords until one compiled properly.

Also, were you guys using Visual Studio? If you use any of the wizards, they almost *force* you into using .h/.cpp files and prototypes. I can't even imagine how a GUI would have been implemented.

No visual studio. I work in a research lab, so we're mainly a linux/unix shop and if we do write for windows/mac, we use unix tools to do our porting. Using function prototypes in C/C++ is a Good Thing(tm) since otherwise, the compiler assumes the return type of functions is int. It's just the way the language is.

Pointer arithmetic can be elegant at times. Portable byte swapping routines for endian issues are a good example. The thing that got me about the pointer arithmetic in this case was that I saw no less than 3 different idioms for accessing elements in an array within 5 lines of eachother... for example, I'd see something like

foo[i] = bar;
*(foo + i) = bar;
tmp = foo;
tmp += i;
*tmp = bar;

What made it worse was that the arrays represented two dimensional data. Maybe I should submit some of the more egregious code sometime. I saved it for posterity's sake.

dubwai · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

WTF is wrong with pointer arithmetic? Just because people abuse it to create WTFs doesn't mean that it is a WTF. Same applies to VB, etc. Another clichè comes to mind: Don't use it, if you don't mean it :) It doesn't solve all the world problems, but makes some of them easier to solve.

Oh, just to finish with a last clichè, since I'm on a roll here: Guns don't kill people, people kill people (with guns).

By that logic, everyone should be allowed to walk around with personal nuclear weapons or spray cans full of VX nerve gas. VX nerve gas doesn't kill people. People kill people. You'll get my VX nerve gas when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Not that I think everything that can be used improperly should be eliminated it's just that your argument is a little specious.

mizhi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

dubwai:
By that logic, everyone should be allowed to walk around with personal nuclear weapons or spray cans full of VX nerve gas. VX nerve gas doesn't kill people. People kill people. You'll get my VX nerve gas when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Not that I think everything that can be used improperly should be eliminated it's just that your argument is a little specious.

Well, as an argument for allowing people to carry guns, it's bad. The original purpose of that argment was to dispel the notion that guns are inherently bad.

strongarm · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:
Phew! Sheesh, I'm still feeling yesterday's SQL-Cookie post, so we'll have to tone it down just a bit today and with this submission from Gavin Melling. Gavin was maintaining an ASP-based web application and couldn't seem to figure how where all these variables (sTmp, iI, etc) used throughout the code were coming from. They weren't declared, and Option Explicit was on, so it just didn't make sense.

Buried behind three levels of include files in the footer, Gavin finally found temp.inc ...
' temp.inc
' temporary variables
Dim iI
Dim iJ
Dim iK
Dim iL
Dim iM
Dim iN
Dim iO
Dim iP
Dim iQ
Dim iR
Dim iS
Dim sTmp
Dim sTmp2
Dim sTmp3
Dim sTmp4
Dim sTmp5
Dim sTmp6
Dim sTmp7
Dim sTmp8
Dim aTmp
Dim aTmp2
Dim aTmp3
Dim aTmp4
Dim aTmp5
Dim aTmp6

Most people have commented on the fact that it appears to be hungarian notation at the beginning of the variable names, but they are all declared as variants (VB6 no type declaration assumes Variant). So the hungarian notation is just wishful thinking..i.e. I can store whatever I want in there, but the original author would really like me store an integer in iJ. So let's recap the WTF's in this one:

1.) Horrible names 2.) Included in every page. 3.) Hungarian notation - this one will probably start a flame war, but hungarian notation is a gross violation of OO principles (in particular encapsulation)...it's like calling my dog dogSpike. anybody looking at him can tell he's a dog, but then I replace dogSpike with a cat...does that mean I now rename my pet catSpike (I have a hard time remembering names, so all my pets were named Spike - jk)...leaving the name would imply incorrect things to someone who didn't look at the declaration of dogSpike who's really a cat. Instead, I'll call my pet Spike and when I'm not sure what he is, I'll look at his declaration. This is the exact same problem with this code. sTmp is really a variant. So someone may actually put a string in there, but then someone else may use it in a completely different way and voila unanticipated side effects. 4.) declaring everything as a variant. Void pointers were fun in C/C++. Fun but could be very very dangerous.

El Duderino · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

I worked with an old-timer who declared all of his variables global in the header file. Never used params, never used local variables except for counters or whatnot. We had a completely ineffectual team leader who wouldn't recognize programming standards if we hot glued them to her forehead. We constantly tried to discourage him from writing crap like that but he would argue perpetually why doing it his way was better since you never had to worry about accessing the variables. Some declarations would go on for pages and pages.

Good times!

generationgav · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

These were all declared globally (though in a hidden away file) and used throughout the site.
I found a couple more corkers as well such as

StrTemp2=StrTemp2

and

StrTemp="content of site"
StrTemp2=StrTemp
StrTemp="more content"
StrTemp3=StrTemp

The site wasn't even a couple of pages big or anything like that, it's quite a large complicated system.

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

El Duderino:

I worked with an old-timer who declared all of his variables global in the header file. Never used params, never used local variables except for counters or whatnot. We had a completely ineffectual team leader who wouldn't recognize programming standards if we hot glued them to her forehead. We constantly tried to discourage him from writing crap like that but he would argue perpetually why doing it his way was better since you never had to worry about accessing the variables. Some declarations would go on for pages and pages.

Good times!

Ouch! But you never mentioned if concurrency was involved in these systems? That would make it even better :) This site is soo scaring me away from even getting a job in "the wild" (aka industry). "Forever young, I want to be forever young"

tiro · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

mizhi:
I still marvel at the fact that he figured out how to use externs and pointer arithmetic, but not the preprocessor, or function prototypes.

He figgured out pointer arithmetic but not function prototypes? I think that's a new definition of idiot savant.

skicow · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Mike R:
Maurits:
i = Integer...
s = String...
a = ???

a = Array, presumably. This guy must have taken "how to write unmaintanable code" literally.

Yep, I've used 'a' to mean Array in my code too - though I named it a little better, and more descriptive to what was contained in the Array than aTmp6!?!

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

tiro:
mizhi:
I still marvel at the fact that he figured out how to use externs and pointer arithmetic, but not the preprocessor, or function prototypes.

He figgured out pointer arithmetic but not function prototypes? I think that's a new definition of idiot savant.

Or just an assembly programmer.

loneprogrammer · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

strongarm:
3.) Hungarian notation - this one will probably start a flame war, but hungarian notation is a gross violation of OO principles (in particular encapsulation)...it's like calling my dog dogSpike.

This Joel on Software article makes a good point in favor of Hungarian notation, but it is not the kind that you are used to.

Instead of using a prefix to indicate the type of a variable, the prefix should tell you something what what is actually in the variable.

int iCount = 0; // Redundant, we already know it's an integer

String usUserName = getParm("username"); // us means "unsafe string"
String sUserName = sUrlEscape(usUserName); // s means "safe string"

If you are using this kind of notation and you accidentally write usUserName to the output, you know it is a mistake, because you should never write unsafe strings to the output.

For the full argument, read the article.

Jeff S · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

strongarm:
Alex Papadimoulis:
Phew! Sheesh, I'm still feeling yesterday's SQL-Cookie post, so we'll have to tone it down just a bit today and with this submission from Gavin Melling. Gavin was maintaining an ASP-based web application and couldn't seem to figure how where all these variables (sTmp, iI, etc) used throughout the code were coming from. They weren't declared, and Option Explicit was on, so it just didn't make sense.

Buried behind three levels of include files in the footer, Gavin finally found temp.inc ...
' temp.inc
' temporary variables
Dim iI
Dim iJ
Dim iK
Dim iL
Dim iM
Dim iN
Dim iO
Dim iP
Dim iQ
Dim iR
Dim iS
Dim sTmp
Dim sTmp2
Dim sTmp3
Dim sTmp4
Dim sTmp5
Dim sTmp6
Dim sTmp7
Dim sTmp8
Dim aTmp
Dim aTmp2
Dim aTmp3
Dim aTmp4
Dim aTmp5
Dim aTmp6
Most people have commented on the fact that it appears to be hungarian notation at the beginning of the variable names, but they are all declared as variants (VB6 no type declaration assumes Variant). So the hungarian notation is just wishful thinking..i.e. I can store whatever I want in there, but the original author would really like me store an integer in iJ. So let's recap the WTF's in this one: 1.) Horrible names 2.) Included in every page. 3.) Hungarian notation - this one will probably start a flame war, but hungarian notation is a gross violation of OO principles (in particular encapsulation)...it's like calling my dog dogSpike. anybody looking at him can tell he's a dog, but then I replace dogSpike with a cat...does that mean I now rename my pet catSpike (I have a hard time remembering names, so all my pets were named Spike - jk)...leaving the name would imply incorrect things to someone who didn't look at the declaration of dogSpike who's really a cat. Instead, I'll call my pet Spike and when I'm not sure what he is, I'll look at his declaration. This is the exact same problem with this code. sTmp is really a variant. So someone may actually put a string in there, but then someone else may use it in a completely different way and voila unanticipated side effects. 4.) declaring everything as a variant. Void pointers were fun in C/C++. Fun but could be very very dangerous.

Remember -- this is VBScript. Everything is a variant; there are no data type declarations in the language (same with javascript).

Actually, in VBScript, it is sometimes useful to use hungarian notation because in scripting languages w/o data types you cannot tell that Spike is a dog or that Count is an integer. This is especially handy in function argument declarations.

skicow · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

strongarm:

Most people have commented on the fact that it appears to be hungarian notation at the beginning of the variable names, but they are all declared as variants (VB6 no type declaration assumes Variant). So the hungarian notation is just wishful thinking..i.e. I can store whatever I want in there, but the original author would really like me store an integer in iJ.

I'm pretty sure this code is VBScript since it's from an ASP page, and you cannot declare variables as any type in VBScript.

And yes, the hungarian notation *is* wishful thinking, but it's a little help for the developer in the right direction as to what's supposed to be in the variable.

strongarm:

3.) Hungarian notation - this one will probably start a flame war, but hungarian notation is a gross violation of OO principles (in particular encapsulation)...it's like calling my dog dogSpike. anybody looking at him can tell he's a dog, but then I replace dogSpike with a cat...does that mean I now rename my pet catSpike (I have a hard time remembering names, so all my pets were named Spike - jk)...leaving the name would imply incorrect things to someone who didn't look at the declaration of dogSpike who's really a cat. Instead, I'll call my pet Spike and when I'm not sure what he is, I'll look at his declaration. This is the exact same problem with this code. sTmp is really a variant. So someone may actually put a string in there, but then someone else may use it in a completely different way and voila unanticipated side effects.
4.) declaring everything as a variant. Void pointers were fun in C/C++. Fun but could be very very dangerous.

3) True, Hungarian notation is anti-OO but since this is script language it's not OO so hungarian notation is fine.

4) - see above about VBScript.

Don't get me wrong - this code is a WTF and I agree with your other points.

Charles Nadolski · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

andyandy:

WTF is wrong with pointer arithmetic? Just because people abuse it to create WTFs doesn't mean that it is a WTF. Same applies to VB, etc. Another clichè comes to mind: Don't use it, if you don't mean it :) It doesn't solve all the world problems, but makes some of them easier to solve.

Oh, just to finish with a last clichè, since I'm on a roll here: Guns don't kill people, people kill people (with guns).

Pointer arithmetic:
1)It's harder to read than [] brackets
2)No protection from going out of bounds in memory
3)By extension, you can accidentally overwrite other objects in memory
4)Harder to maintain
5)doesn't preserve well across architectures (little endian versus big endian)
6)doesn't preserve well across architectures (16-bit versus 32-bit versus 64-bit)

You can use it at your own risk, but good luck trying to get away with in our house, mr "real programmer".

And it's cliché not clichè.

triso · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
This brings back good old FORTRAN memories:

IMPLICIT REAL*8 A-H,O-Z

Ah, those were the days...

What saved my ass whenever working with crufty old FORTRAN code was:

IMPLICIT NONE
or even:
IMPLICIT LOGICAL (A-Z).

Doing that would bring the bugs out of the woodwork.

Mike R · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Charles Nadolski:

Pointer arithmetic:
1)It's harder to read than [] brackets
2)No protection from going out of bounds in memory
3)By extension, you can accidentally overwrite other objects in memory
4)Harder to maintain
5)doesn't preserve well across architectures (little endian versus big endian)
6)doesn't preserve well across architectures (16-bit versus 32-bit versus 64-bit)

1) True.
2) [] does not necessarilly provide you any protection, and in C and C++ this is not restricted to a range of values, and is simply shorthand for a+i
3) See 2
4) Agreed.
5) No more than [], see point 2. Using with void * does not guarantee results, however.
6) See point 5. Even more so with void *, but you are afforded that i+a will always advance sizeof(type)*a bytes.

Before you trash something, make sure you understand it.. ;)

Mike R · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

triso:
Anonymous:
This brings back good old FORTRAN memories:

IMPLICIT REAL*8 A-H,O-Z

Ah, those were the days...

What saved my ass whenever working with crufty old FORTRAN code was:

IMPLICIT NONE
or even:
IMPLICIT LOGICAL (A-Z).

Doing that would bring the bugs out of the woodwork.

Reminds me of good'ol QBasic DEFINT A-Z

smitty_one_each · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Jeff S:
Remember -- this is VBScript. Everything is a variant; there are no data type declarations in the language (same with javascript).

Actually, in VBScript, it is sometimes useful to use hungarian notation because in scripting languages w/o data types you cannot tell that Spike is a dog or that Count is an integer. This is especially handy in function argument declarations.

This is most fun when the language usually typecasts for you, except for when it doesn't.
For example:

Const MAX_COUNT = 5
Dim counter
For counter = 0 to MAX_COUNT
 If Request.Querystring("am_I_going_to_work") = counter Then
 'Do something with am_I_going_to_work
 End If
Next

Dies (at least in older IIS versions) because "5" <> 5, and the type-agnostic environment in which you thought you were operating suddenly (for a number of hours I still recall with emabarrassment) leaves you adrift; Response.Write is no help on this one.
Probably C# coding alleviates some of this surprise, but I haven't much time with that one at the moment.

cm5400 · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
tiro:
mizhi:
I still marvel at the fact that he figured out how to use externs and pointer arithmetic, but not the preprocessor, or function prototypes.

He figgured out pointer arithmetic but not function prototypes? I think that's a new definition of idiot savant.

Or just an assembly programmer.

Oh how I hated that damn assembly language. I always forgot to put the damn [] around the variables or registers when accessing the value of the pointer not the address. Brings back horrible nightmares of my college years...

dubwai · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

loneprogrammer:

This Joel on Software article makes a good point in favor of Hungarian notation, but it is not the kind that you are used to.

Instead of using a prefix to indicate the type of a variable, the prefix should tell you something what what is actually in the variable.

int iCount = 0; // Redundant, we already know it's an integer

String usUserName = getParm("username"); // us means "unsafe string"
String sUserName = sUrlEscape(usUserName); // s means "safe string"

If you are using this kind of notation and you accidentally write usUserName to the output, you know it is a mistake, because you should never write unsafe strings to the output.

For the full argument, read the article.

I never really thought Joel's advice was all that compelling and this is another case.

The biggest problem with Hungarian notation is that it requires remembering a bunch of arcane notation can mean different things to different people. If you followed this advice, you'd need to publish a book of what all the notation means. The other problem is that the notation can easily become out-of-snyc with reality.

I still feel that good OO makes this pretty much unecessary. The problem is that most developers don't understand OO even when they think they do.

dubwai · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

loneprogrammer:
If you are using this kind of notation and you accidentally write usUserName to the output, you know it is a mistake, because you should never write unsafe strings to the output.

As an example, when I first looked at this, I though "WTF is an 'unsafe' String?" Its useless unless everyone knows that 's' stands for 'unsafe' and 'unsafe' means that it's not url-encoded. 's' could mean 'synchronized' for all I know.

dubwai · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

loneprogrammer:
If you are using this kind of notation and you accidentally write usUserName to the output, you know it is a mistake, because you should never write unsafe strings to the output.

As an example, when I first looked at this, I though "WTF is an 'unsafe' String?" Its useless unless everyone knows that 's' stands for 'unsafe' and 'unsafe' means that it's not url-encoded. 's' could mean 'synchronized' for all I know.

Xepol · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Sadly, not really a wtf, more of a "why???", unless in this case the w stands for where.

Mind you, its nice to not get bombarded by perversity like yesterday's two days running.

Lotta chatter about what is ultimately lame code rather than peverse (hey, asp is a scripting language, it doesn't have scope to speak of, so you might as well declare 'em all together somewhere, at least the fact that they are all temporary is well documented)

For such stupidity was grep invented after all.

mizhi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

tiro:

He figgured out pointer arithmetic but not function prototypes? I think that's a new definition of idiot savant.

Truly. It wasn't until I learned assembly that I was truly comfortable with pointers. Not sure how he managed.

mizhi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Charles Nadolski:

Pointer arithmetic:
1)It's harder to read than [] brackets
2)No protection from going out of bounds in memory
3)By extension, you can accidentally overwrite other objects in memory
4)Harder to maintain
5)doesn't preserve well across architectures (little endian versus big endian)
6)doesn't preserve well across architectures (16-bit versus 32-bit versus 64-bit)

Agree with 2,3,6. Although, technically, [] doesn't protect you against out of bounds errors either. I had problem 3 about 2 weeks ago (on the code in question) that took me forever and a day to find, although again, [] wouldn't save you.

With the type of indexing he was doing even [] wouldn't have helped. 4, depends on what you're doing. 5, you can use creative pointer manipulation to do byte swapping (I mentioned this previously). 1, it's syntactic sugar, but you're right.

But yeah, in general, it's best to stay away from the type of shenanigans I was seeing.

Bellinghman · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

"As an example, when I first looked at this, I though "WTF is an 'unsafe' String?" Its useless unless everyone knows that 'us' stands for 'unsafe' and 'unsafe' means that it's not url-encoded. 's' could mean 'synchronized' for all I know."

Yes. (Correcting one tiny typo.)

I mean, it's part way there:

String usUserName = getParm("username"); // us means "unsafe string" String sUserName = sUrlEscape(usUserName); // s means "safe string"

But it's not all the way there:

UnsafeString Name1 = getParm("username"); SafeString Name2 = SafeString(UserName);

(Out of context, I'm not going for more useful names than that.)

If you're going to use a type system, don't get off half way. Joel strikes me as that most dangerous of people: someone with a little knowledge.

But perhaps he's put himself in an environment where the type system is half arsed.

John Smallberries · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Ah, the good 'ol days of includes, globals and no type safety.

I'm guessing iQ was always a low number...

Alex: another great title! How do you come up with these?

Charles Nadolski · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Mike R:

2) [] does not necessarilly provide you any protection, and in C and C++ this is not restricted to a range of values, and is simply shorthand for a+i
3) See 2
4) Agreed.
5) No more than [], see point 2. Using with void * does not guarantee results, however.
6) See point 5. Even more so with void *, but you are afforded that i+a will always advance sizeof(type)*a bytes.

Before you trash something, make sure you understand it.. ;)

2+3) Yes, it does provide protection in the sense that if you go out of bounds, it wile puke on you (assuming you're actually using an array class like CArray<type> and not the crappy built-in one).
5) If you're accessing OBJECTS with [] instead of just casting them to void* like a loon and incrementing merrily along byte by byte you won't run into any endian problems. That is, assuming you're using a proper array class.
6) I guess you were agreeing with me then.

Perhaps I should have been more clear in saying using [] in the sense that you're going to use a true array class instead of merely translating all your pointer arithmatic to []. Still, using [] is still saner than not, when an array class is unavailable.

And I perfectly know WTF I'm talking about, I programed a whole videogame in Intel Assembly, and did nothing but pointer arithmatic in it. However, when coding in C++ it should really be avoided. Pointer arithmatic is the compiler's job where it can do a better bug-free job of it.

dubwai · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Bellinghman:
Joel strikes me as that most dangerous of people: someone with a little knowledge. But perhaps he's put himself in an environment where the type system is half arsed.

So it's not just me. Though he strikes me more as someone who thinks he knows more than he really does.

dubwai · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Charles Nadolski:

And I perfectly know WTF I'm talking about, I programed a whole videogame in Intel Assembly, and did nothing but pointer arithmatic in it. However, when coding in C++ it should really be avoided. Pointer arithmatic is the compiler's job where it can do a better bug-free job of it.

This was a small game, right? Sounds painful.

Charles Nadolski · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Charles Nadolski:

And I perfectly know WTF I'm talking about, I programed a whole videogame in Intel Assembly, and did nothing but pointer arithmatic in it. However, when coding in C++ it should really be avoided. Pointer arithmatic is the compiler's job where it can do a better bug-free job of it.

This was a small game, right? Sounds painful.

Fireside chat time everybody!

It was a 2-D space fighting game using sprites and some vector drawing, and used real-time sprite rotation. It had a fully-functional 2-D physics engine, single-player versus 3 CPU. Multiplayer TCP-IP was scrapped at the last minute. Sound effects were a bit limited as well :-/ We also had 3 weeks to complete it. It was playable, albeit barely, since our AI guy didn't write anything and I had to come up with an AI an hour before the thing was due.

I can't find the website I had for it. Maybe I'll post it later... the source code may make you just lose your lunch! Someday I hope to resurrect that POS and make it openGL....

John Smallberries · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Jeff S:
Remember -- this is VBScript. Everything is a variant; there are no data type declarations in the language (same with javascript).

Yes, but the Variant type does contain subtype information.

smitty_one_each:

...because "5" <> 5, and the type-agnostic environment in which you thought you were operating suddenly (for a number of hours I still recall with emabarrassment) leaves you adrift; Response.Write is no help on this one.

VBScript offers the VarType function to retrieve the subtype of a given Variant:
dim var1
var1 = "5"
VarType(var1) 'would return 8 (vbString)
var1 = 5
VarType(var1) 'would return 2 (vbInteger)

There are even subtypes like vbObject and vbArray.

Not a lot of fun, but better than nothing.

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Charles Nadolski:

Perhaps I should have been more clear in saying using [] in the sense that you're going to use a true array class instead of merely translating all your pointer arithmatic to []. Still, using [] is still saner than not, when an array class is unavailable.

And I perfectly know WTF I'm talking about, I programed a whole videogame in Intel Assembly, and did nothing but pointer arithmatic in it. However, when coding in C++ it should really be avoided. Pointer arithmatic is the compiler's job where it can do a better bug-free job of it.

Whilst often I'd agree that its best to leave the compile to do the mundane work, sometimes its just better to do it yourself (today I found that the compiler I use at work produces some WTF worth interpretations of the C ... although I admitt I was trying to push it....)

mizhi · 2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Charles Nadolski:

2+3) Yes, it does provide protection in the sense that if you go out of bounds, it wile puke on you (assuming you're actually using an array class like CArray<type> and not the crappy built-in one).
5) If you're accessing OBJECTS with [] instead of just casting them to void* like a loon and incrementing merrily along byte by byte you won't run into any endian problems. That is, assuming you're using a proper array class.
6) I guess you were agreeing with me then.

Perhaps I should have been more clear in saying using [] in the sense that you're going to use a true array class instead of merely translating all your pointer arithmatic to []. Still, using [] is still saner than not, when an array class is unavailable.

And I perfectly know WTF I'm talking about, I programed a whole videogame in Intel Assembly, and did nothing but pointer arithmatic in it. However, when coding in C++ it should really be avoided. Pointer arithmatic is the compiler's job where it can do a better bug-free job of it.

</type>

It was C-code that I was talking about, Charles. Not C++. If it were C++, I wouldn't mess with arrays, I'd use vector<T> or an array class.

2005-06-14 Reply Admin

Ok, pointer arithmetic might be dangerous. But if you do not undertand it, you will never understand iterators.
Only random access containers have [ ]. For most of the others, iterators work almost like pointers
(in many cases they are implemented as pointers).

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