Recycled Code

Hannes has inherited a legacy project. Like most legacy projects, it has no real documentation, the code is a disorganized mess, and making any change runs a non-zero risk of completely knocking over the house of cards.

What few comments the code has tells us things like this:

//Copied from DateUtil.cs
public static int CW(DateTime Date){
     CultureInfo CUI = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture;
     return CUI.Calendar.GetWeekOfYear(Date, 
        CUI.DateTimeFormat.CalendarWeekRule, 
        CUI.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek);
}

I suppose it's nice to know that you copied this code from another file, especially as the copied code is both public and static, and thus copying is completely unnecessary. I guess calling DateUtil.CW would have been too confusing, because I mean, what does CW even mean anyway?

Then, he stumbled across a function called StrLength. At a guess, what might you think StrLength does? You might think it's a reinvention of the built-in String.Length function. Well, what if I told you that it returns a string. In fact, take a look at the signature:

private string StrLength(string s, int len, string repl)

What do you think this function does? If you said, "It's a pad left function," then you win… and we have a lot of questions about how your brain works.

private string StrLength(string s, int len, string repl){
    string result = string.Empty;
    result=s;
    while (result.Length < len){
        result = repl + result;
    }
    return result;
}

So, no, it is not a reinvention of String.Length, but it is a reinvention of String.PadLeft. It also creates loads of unnecessary string instances, and since it does no input checking, could easily receive a multiple character repl value. I guess that's why it's private.

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