The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Base-36 Conversion

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-06-08

Johannes needed to convert some data from Base-36. A helpful peer offered this solution, which… works.

int getBase36(char c) {
        std::map<char, int> b36;
       
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '0', 0 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '1', 1 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '2', 2 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '3', 3 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '4', 4 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '5', 5 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '6', 6 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '7', 7 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '8', 8 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( '9', 9 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'a', 10 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'b', 11 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'c', 12 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'd', 13 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'e', 14 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'f', 15 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'g', 16 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'h', 17 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'i', 18 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'j', 19 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'k', 20 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'l', 21 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'm', 22 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'n', 23 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'o', 24 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'p', 25 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'q', 26 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'r', 27 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 's', 28 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 't', 29 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'u', 30 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'v', 31 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'w', 32 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'x', 33 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'y', 34 );
        b36.insert(std::pair<char, int>( 'z', 35 );
       
        return b36.find(c)->second;
}

23 comments - Last comment @ 03:26

Copy Serialization

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-06-07

Twenty years ago, Stefano Z was a lowly junior developer, working with a set of senior developers, who had rules. A lowly junior developer, for example, couldn't be trusted to do something risky and dangerous, like serialize data to a buffer. Not without a safe API to keep them from foot-gunning themselves.

The API interface went thus:

40 comments - Last comment @ 03:17

Enterprise Estimates

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2023-06-06

Mary's company makes an enterprise product. Like many enterprise products, it shipped as a large pile of features that could potentially solve every problem any business could ever have, along with a suite of APIs that allowed customers to patch in their own custom functionality for their business needs. Also like many enterprise products, those features were only turned on or off based on how much the customer paid.

The arithmetic of all of these factors summed up to a set of function calls in the form IsFeatureXAvailable, with an added twist: the business side of the company was constantly changing the rules. "What the market will bear," and all that, meant that the IsFeature class of functions were some of the most volatile in the codebase.

20 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-07

Weakly Miles Calculation

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-06-05

Emma found a function called get_mileage_per_year. The purpose of the function is to apply some business rules around travel expenses, and while I'm sure it does that… it also makes some choices.

def get_mileage_per_year(self):
    # Mileage not set yet
    if not self.mileage_per_day:
        return 0

    weekly_miles = self.mileage_per_day

    extra_miles = 60 - self.mileage_per_day if self.purposes == ["special"] else 25

    # Add in extra miles for 'special' purpose is selected

    weekly_miles += extra_miles if "special" in self.purposes else 0

    #   where average daily miles are given by the weekly miles variable
    annual_miles = (weekly_miles * 365) + 2000
    if "special" in self.purposes:
        annual_miles = max(annual_miles, 24000)

    # Return annual miles bound to range 4,000 < mileage < 50,000
    mileage = int(min(max(annual_miles, 4000), 50000))
    return mileage

22 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-08

The Delete Procedure

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-06-01

Daniel recently found this pair of stored procedures. While the code within them is simple, they hint at horrors just beyond the edge of the stage, the kinds of things that might drive one mad.

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_SomeProc]
@ID       VARCHAR(6)

AS

IF @ID = '109369'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table1
                WHERE ID = '109369'
        END
IF @ID = '100976'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table1
                WHERE ID = '100976'
        END
GO

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_SomeOtherProc]
@ID       VARCHAR(6)

AS

IF @ID = '109369'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table2
                WHERE ID = '109369'
        END
IF @ID = '100976'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table2
                WHERE ID = '100976'
        END
GO

19 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-05

Exceptional Descriptions

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-05-31

"The Colonial" was trawling through some code they inherited, and found this approach to doing exceptions in C#:

public enum ReturnCode : int
{
      Success                                         = 0,

        Enum1                     = 100,
  Enum2          = 110,

   // *snip* - LOTS of enums
     // .
    // .
   
    UnknownError               = 998,
      Exception                  = 999
};

22 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-07

Trimming Up Your Language

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-05-30

As a native English speaker, I've inherited a very chaotic perspective on language: "correct" language is defined by usage, loan words are less "loaned" and more like the mandolin someone lent me 20 years ago- mine now. New words can be ginned up on the fly, and parts of speech are just a suggestion.

Many other languages don't take this approach. French, for example, is defined by the Académie Française. There is a standard, and officially correct way to use French. In programming terms, we could say that French is C, while English is Perl.

43 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-05

A Big Ol' Log

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2023-05-25

We've already picked on bad logging code this week, but we haven't picked on PHP in awhile, so let's look at some bad PHP logging code, from Kris.

        $path = self::getPath();

        if (file_exists($path)) {
            $content = file_get_contents($path);
        } else {
            $content = "";
        }
        $content .= "\n" . date('Y-m-d H:i') . " | " . $message;
        file_put_contents($path, $content);

32 comments - Last comment @ 2023-05-29