The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

A Trying Block

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-05-22

Mark sends us a very simple Java function which has the job of parsing an integer from a string. Now, you might say, "But Java has a built in for that, Integer.parseInt," and have I got good news for you: they actually used it. It's just everything else they did wrong.

private int makeInteger(String s)
{
  int i=0;
  try
  {
    Integer.parseInt(s);
  }
  catch (NumberFormatException e)
  {
    i=0;
    return i;
  }
  i=Integer.parseInt(s);
  return i;
}

12 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-24

Buff Reading

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-05-21

Frank inherited some code that reads URLs from a file, and puts them into a collection. This is a delightfully simple task. What could go wrong?

static String[]  readFile(String filename) {
    String record = null;
    Vector vURLs = new Vector();
    int recCnt = 0;

    try {
        FileReader fr = new FileReader(filename);
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(fr);

        record = new String();

        while ((record = br.readLine()) != null) {
            vURLs.add(new String(record));
            //System.out.println(recCnt + ": " + vURLs.get(recCnt));
            recCnt++;
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // catch possible io errors from readLine()
        System.out.println("IOException error reading " + filename + " in readURLs()!\n");
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    System.out.println("Reading URLs ...\n");

    int arrCnt = 0;
    String[] sURLs = new String[vURLs.size()];
    Enumeration eURLs = vURLs.elements();

    for (Enumeration e = vURLs.elements() ; e.hasMoreElements() ;) {
        sURLs[arrCnt] = (String)e.nextElement();
        System.out.println(arrCnt + ": " + sURLs[arrCnt]);
        arrCnt++;
    }

    if (recCnt != arrCnt++) {
        System.out.println("WARNING: The number of URLs in the input file does not match the number of URLs in the array!\n\n");
    }

    return sURLs;
} // end of readFile()

17 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-22

What the FFFFFFFF

by Remy Porter in Representative Line on 2025-05-20

Combining Java with lower-level bit manipulations is asking for trouble- not because the language is inadequate to the task, but because so many of the developers who work in Java are so used to working at a high level they might not quite "get" what they need to do.

Victor inherited one such project, which used bitmasks and bitwise operations a great deal, based on the network protocol it implemented. Here's how the developers responsible created their bitmasks:

15 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-21

Identifying the Representative

by Remy Porter in Representative Line on 2025-05-19

Kate inherited a system where Java code generates JavaScript (by good old fashioned string concatenation) and embeds it into an output template. The Java code was written by someone who didn't fully understand Java, but JavaScript was also a language they didn't understand, and the resulting unholy mess was buggy and difficult to maintain.

Why trying to debug the JavaScript, Kate had to dig through the generated code, which led to this little representative line:

11 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-22

A Jammed Up Session

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-05-15

Andre has inherited a rather antique ASP .Net WebForms application. It's a large one, with many pages in it, but they all follow a certain pattern. Let's see if you can spot it.

protected void btnSearch_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ArrayList paramsRel = new ArrayList();
    paramsRel["Name"] = txtNome.Text;
    paramsRel["Date"] = txtDate.Text;
    Session["paramsRel"] = paramsRel;
   
    List<Client> clients = Controller.FindClients();
    //Some other code
}

10 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-16

itouhhh…

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-05-14

Frequently in programming, we can make a tradeoff: use less (or more) CPU in exchange for using more (or less) memory. Lookup tables are a great example: use a big pile of memory to turn complicated calculations into O(1) operations.

So, for example, implementing itoa, the C library function for turning an integer into a character array (aka, a string), you could maybe make it more efficient using a lookup table.

32 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-16

Exactly a Date

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-05-13

Alexandar sends us some C# date handling code. The best thing one can say is that they didn't reinvent any wheels, but that might be worse, because they used the existing wheels to drive right off a cliff.

try
{
    var date = DateTime.ParseExact(member.PubDate.ToString(), "M/d/yyyy h:mm:ss tt", null); 
    objCustomResult.PublishedDate = date;
}
catch (Exception datEx)
{
}

17 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-17

Would a Function by Any Other Name Still be WTF?

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-05-12

"Don't use exception handling for normal flow control," is generally good advice. But Andy's lead had a PhD in computer science, and with that kind of education, wasn't about to let good advice or best practices tell them what to do. That's why, when they needed to validate inputs, they wrote code C# like this:


    public static bool IsDecimal(string theValue)
    {
        try
        {
            Convert.ToDouble(theValue);
            return true;
        }
        catch
        {
            return false;
        }
    }

15 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-13