The Weird and The Wonderful

The Weird and The Wonderful forum is a place to post Coding Horrors, Worst Practices, and the occasional flash of brilliance.

We all come across code that simply boggles the mind. Lazy kludges, embarrassing mistakes, horrid workarounds and developers just not quite getting it. And then somedays we come across - or write - the truly sublime.

Post your Best, your worst, and your most interesting. But please - no programming questions . This forum is purely for amusement and discussions on code snippets. All actual programming questions will be removed.

Re: Good if paid by number of lines!

Rauhotz14-Jan-09 12:55

Rauhotz

14-Jan-09 12:55

I always do ...

switch (x)
{
case 0 : y = 0; break;
case 1 : y = 1; break;
case 2 : y = 2; break;
...
...
}

... for Int32 Smile | :)

Re: Good if paid by number of lines!

itsravie3-Mar-09 3:18

itsravie

3-Mar-09 3:18

u r jerk

Ravie Busie
Coding is my birth-right and bugs are part of feature my code has!

Re: Good if paid by number of lines!

Divyang Mithaiwala3-Apr-09 23:24

Divyang Mithaiwala

3-Apr-09 23:24

Rauhotz wrote:
I always do ...

switch (x)
{
case 0 : y = 0; break;
case 1 : y = 1; break;
case 2 : y = 2; break;
...
...
}

At last you forgot to write default case.

default: y = x;

Do not trust a computer...
Always check what computer is doing

regards,
Divyang Mithaiwala
Software Engineer

Making shortcuts even shorter

gnjunge26-Dec-08 4:45

gnjunge

26-Dec-08 4:45

I found this in JS:

function toggleDiv(divName)
{
    $(divName).toggle();
}

So using the shortcut: toggleDiv('foo');, we would end up with 17 characters.
Using the unusual long version: $('foo').toggle();, we would end up with 18 characters.

Re: Making shortcuts even shorter

Sauce!27-Dec-08 18:04

Sauce!

27-Dec-08 18:04

perhaps the coder has a non-functioning $ key? :P

Re: Making shortcuts even shorter

gnjunge27-Dec-08 20:56

gnjunge

27-Dec-08 20:56

That's very considerate of you!

Re: Making shortcuts even shorter

Tony Pottier27-Dec-08 23:52

Tony Pottier

27-Dec-08 23:52

It's sad, but I've seen those kind of things so many times I hardly consider them horrible anymore.

Re: Making shortcuts even shorter

Malli_S28-Dec-08 20:50

Malli_S

28-Dec-08 20:50

Does user hate to see so many '$' on the screen ? WTF | :WTF:

[Delegates] [Virtual Desktop] [Tray Me !]

-Malli...!

Re: Making shortcuts even shorter

GibbleCH29-Dec-08 3:42

GibbleCH

29-Dec-08 3:42

Unfortunately you have to use the function nearly 50 times before it actually saves any keystrokes...

Devil's Advocate

Chris Maunder29-Dec-08 5:01

Chris Maunder

29-Dec-08 5:01

Was this a remnant of moving from the standard 'getElementById' to using a library such as jQuery that provides the '$' shortcut?

Maybe it's not terrible after all. Maybe doing it this way

a) saved many, many characters in the initial form
b) allowed a very quick and safe way of transitioning to the new syntax

cheers,
Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

Re: Devil's Advocate

gnjunge29-Dec-08 5:37

gnjunge

29-Dec-08 5:37

Could be, only the project is very new (1 month old) and this function is used on 1 page only (so it was not much work to do a Search & Replace on 1 page).

Re: Devil's Advocate

itsravie3-Mar-09 3:18

itsravie

3-Mar-09 3:18

appreciate ur guts to write these lines of code

Ravie Busie
Coding is my birth-right and bugs are part of feature my code has!

Re: Making shortcuts even shorter

Douglas Dean7-Jan-09 5:01

Douglas Dean

7-Jan-09 5:01

...so he would have to use the function at least 60 times just to make up for the fixed cost of the function definition...

Percent-decoding a URL

ClementsDan22-Dec-08 14:24

ClementsDan

22-Dec-08 14:24

Shortly before my co-worker left for vacation today, he wrote something like this:

strNew.Replace("%20", " ");
strNew.Replace("%21", "!");
strNew.Replace("%22", """);
strNew.Replace("%23", "#");
strNew.Replace("%24", "$");
strNew.Replace("%25", "%");
strNew.Replace("%26", "&");
strNew.Replace("%27", "'");
strNew.Replace("%28", "(");
strNew.Replace("%29", ")");
strNew.Replace("%2A", "*");
strNew.Replace("%2B", "+");
strNew.Replace("%2C", ",");
strNew.Replace("%2D", "-");
strNew.Replace("%2E", ".");
strNew.Replace("%2F", "/");
strNew.Replace("%2a", "*");
strNew.Replace("%2b", "+");
strNew.Replace("%2c", ",");
strNew.Replace("%2d", "-");
strNew.Replace("%2e", ".");
strNew.Replace("%2f", "/");
strNew.Replace("%3A", ":");
strNew.Replace("%3B", ";");
strNew.Replace("%3C", "<");
strNew.Replace("%3D", "=");
strNew.Replace("%3E", ">");
strNew.Replace("%3F", "?");
strNew.Replace("%3a", ":");
strNew.Replace("%3b", ";");
strNew.Replace("%3c", "<");
strNew.Replace("%3d", "=");
strNew.Replace("%3e", ">");
strNew.Replace("%3f", "?");
strNew.Replace("%40", "@");
strNew.Replace("%5B", "[");
strNew.Replace("%5C", "\\");
strNew.Replace("%5D", "]");
strNew.Replace("%5E", "^");
strNew.Replace("%5F", "_");
strNew.Replace("%5b", "[");
strNew.Replace("%5c", "\\");
strNew.Replace("%5d", "]");
strNew.Replace("%5e", "^");
strNew.Replace("%5f", "_");
strNew.Replace("%60", "`");
strNew.Replace("%7B", "{");
strNew.Replace("%7C", "|");
strNew.Replace("%7D", "}");
strNew.Replace("%7E", "~");
strNew.Replace("%7b", "{");
strNew.Replace("%7c", "|");
strNew.Replace("%7d", "}");
strNew.Replace("%7e", "~");

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

PIEBALDconsult22-Dec-08 14:52

PIEBALDconsult

22-Dec-08 14:52

Board-up his cube.

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

notmasteryet22-Dec-08 15:54

notmasteryet

22-Dec-08 15:54

At first I thought he was smart to use Excel to generate code using ="strNew.Replace(""%" & DEC2HEX(A1) & """, """ & CHAR(A1) & """);" to save typing of boring code that anybody can type. Smile | :)

But then I noticed case sensitive replacements that as possible to generate using following VB.NET code:

For i As Integer = 32 To 126
  Dim ch As Char = Chr(i)
  If Not Char.IsLetterOrDigit(ch) Then 
    Console.WriteLine("strNew.Replace(""%{0:X2}"", ""{1}"");", i, ch)    
    If i Mod 16 > 9 Then
      Console.WriteLine("strNew.Replace(""%{0:x2}"", ""{1}"");", i, ch)    
    End If
  End If
Next i

It's still less typing than traditional way to do stuff. Genius! Cool | :cool:

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

Tony Pottier22-Dec-08 23:33

Tony Pottier

22-Dec-08 23:33

Your coworker is a genius.

strNew.Replace("%7E", "~");
...
strNew.Replace("%7e", "~");

This one adds another wtf to the thing. You should probably send to to the dailywtf.com.

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

Giorgi Dalakishvili23-Dec-08 2:38

Giorgi Dalakishvili

23-Dec-08 2:38

Apart from the fact that it's a horror code, it will just won't work as he needs to assign value returned by Replace to strnew

strNew = strNew.Replace("%20", " ");

Giorgi Dalakishvili

#region signature
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Re: Percent-decoding a URL

notmasteryet23-Dec-08 4:46

notmasteryet

23-Dec-08 4:46

If the code was written on C++ strNew might be a CString, if it was written on C# it might be StringBuilder.

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

ClementsDan23-Dec-08 15:21

ClementsDan

23-Dec-08 15:21

Right. It's a CString.

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

StevenWalsh3-Jan-09 6:29

StevenWalsh

3-Jan-09 6:29

not if its a StringBuilder

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
-Fred Brooks

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

Luc Pattyn23-Dec-08 5:06

Luc Pattyn

23-Dec-08 5:06

any regex alternatives by your co-worker? that might be really interesting... Laugh | :laugh:

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]

Fixturized forever. Confused | :confused:

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

supercat923-Dec-08 10:46

supercat9

23-Dec-08 10:46

Assuming strNew is of a type that allows replace to be used upon it in that fashion, would its treatment of "%253F" match any known standard?

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

ClementsDan23-Dec-08 15:19

ClementsDan

23-Dec-08 15:19

"%253F" → "%3F" → "?". I don't know of any standard that encodes a question mark that way.

Re: Percent-decoding a URL

Luc Pattyn23-Dec-08 16:17

Luc Pattyn

23-Dec-08 16:17

This minor mistake is easily fixed by moving the %25 -> % replacement to the bottom of the
magnificent method.

Smile | :)

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]

Fixturized forever. Confused | :confused:

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