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: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Chris Maunder21-Jan-09 2:08

Chris Maunder

21-Jan-09 2:08

I agree. The first time I saw the latter in use I had a double take and went 'hang on...' in a very suspicious tone.

No, not recommended, but arguably better than 16 levels of bleah.

cheers,
Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Phil J Pearson21-Jan-09 2:03

Phil J Pearson

21-Jan-09 2:03

Sorry Chris, but that second option is just a <hushed_tones>goto</hushed_tones> that avoids using the letters 'g' or 't'.

I know you can do better than that!

Phil

The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Chris Maunder21-Jan-09 2:08

Chris Maunder

21-Jan-09 2:08

I said is was pretty or would not cause gagging.

cheers,
Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

GOTOs

supercat921-Jan-09 6:37

supercat9

21-Jan-09 6:37

Sorry Chris, but that second option is just a <hushed_tones>goto that avoids using the letters 'g' or 't'.

The reason GOTO has gotten a bad rap is that it has historically been used without any concept of structured control-flow. Programs are generally easiest to understand if they can be subdivided into nested blocks, such that there are few jumps across block boundaries, and all inter-block jumps are of a few specific forms (e.g. jumping to the start or end of an enclosing block). Consider:

  if (condition) goto TRUE_CASE;
FALSE_CASE:
    do_false_stuff();
    goto END_IF;
TRUE_FASE:
    do_true_stuff();
END_IF:

Not quite as nice as using the C block constructs, but not particularly nasty. On the other hand, prior to the invention of structured programming, such code would often have been written as:

  if (condition) goto TRUE_CASE;
  do_false_stuff;
END_IF:

  .. somewhere else in the code ..
TRUE_CASE:
  do_true_stuff();
  goto END_IF;

The code for the true case would often be placed rather arbitrarily. In assembly code written for some machines, it might be placed before the start of the routine which used it, so as to allow an efficient short-displacement branch. Trying to follow code whose physical arrangement bears no relation to its logical flow is, of course, difficult. The problem, though, isn't the use of GOTO per se but rather the use of control flow that doesn't follow any logical structure.

(nb: I do sometimes write assembly code which is more like the latter than the former, particularly in cases where the 'if' case occurs far less frequently than the 'else' case, and the performance impact of adding an extra branch to the 'else' case would be significant and unacceptable. I don't like such code, but sometimes it is necessary).

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

GibbleCH22-Jan-09 11:21

GibbleCH

22-Jan-09 11:21

Or if it's just functions being called in sequence

success = success && Operation1();
success = success && Operation2();
success = success && Operation3();

or more obfuscated...

success = success && Operation1() && Operation2() && Operation3();

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

supercat922-Jan-09 13:14

supercat9

22-Jan-09 13:14

If there were nothing other than functions called in sequence, then one could use:

{
  if (operation1())
    return -1;
  else if (operation2())
    return -2;
  else if (operation3())
    return -3;
  return 0; /* Success! */
}

which is I think nicer than using the flag. The place the flag is helpful is when there are things going on other than the simple operations, e.g.

if (!error)
{
  setup_for_operation2();
  error = operation2();
}

I'm not a particular fan of using the && operator; if one wants to put each operation on one line, one could code it as

if (!error) error = operation3();

which is clearer than the && version, is more versatile when zero is error case (the error flag will hold the particular error code returned, instead of having to hold zero or one), and may yield more efficient code if 0 is error and 1 is success (a statement like ok = ok && operation3(); is likely to perform a redundant write to ok when it's equal to zero.

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

ClementsDan4-Feb-09 17:21

ClementsDan

4-Feb-09 17:21

How about

try
{
    hr = Operation1();
    if (!SUCCESS(hr)) throw hr;

    hr = Operation2();
    if (!SUCCESS(hr)) throw hr;

    hr = Operator3();
    if (!SUCCESS(hr)) throw hr;

    // ...
}
catch (HRESULT hErr)
{
   // ...
}

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Mohammad Dayyan21-Jan-09 8:58

Mohammad Dayyan

21-Jan-09 8:58

kingsimba0511 wrote:
I hope you have a 22 inch above screen.

I don't have it Frown | :(

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

PIEBALDconsult21-Jan-09 9:27

PIEBALDconsult

21-Jan-09 9:27

And it fits my 20" monitor just fine. Even with the 8-SPACE indenting and large font.

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Mohammad Dayyan21-Jan-09 9:40

Mohammad Dayyan

21-Jan-09 9:40

I have 17" monitor $Shucks | :-\$

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Dan Neely21-Jan-09 9:35

Dan Neely

21-Jan-09 9:35

kingsimba0511 wrote:
I hope you have a 22 inch above screen.

It's not the diagonal, it's the resolution. That fits comfortably on my 18" 1600x1200 CRT. I suspect it would fit on my 1400px wide laptop LCD as well.

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots.
-- Robert Royall

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

PIEBALDconsult21-Jan-09 12:21

PIEBALDconsult

21-Jan-09 12:21

And the font, I use 8-point.

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Dan Neely22-Jan-09 2:12

Dan Neely

22-Jan-09 2:12

I use browser default. I've never seen a font only scaling that didn't fubar page layouts at least somewhat. Opera's zoom probably comes closest but there're some video plugins it doesn't scale.

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots.
-- Robert Royall

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

sucram28-Jan-09 1:38

sucram

28-Jan-09 1:38

This developer might not be as stupid as we think. Just think how impressed a business user ( with no concept of programming) must be when this code is shown to him/her. A business person will think that a developer that can write code that looks like this (extremely complex in the business users eyes) must be a genius and a great asset to the company. What better job security can you get?

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. (Quentin Crisp)

Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. (Ronald Reagan)

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

Geoff Field2-Feb-09 15:22

Geoff Field

2-Feb-09 15:22

And the comments on the terminating braces are useless, too.

Professional Geek,
Amateur Stage-Levelling Gauge

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this?

KarstenK3-Feb-09 21:02

KarstenK

3-Feb-09 21:02

I like writing such code. It is typical COM-Spaghetti. Unsure | :~

Congratulations. Rose | [Rose]

(ROFL)

Greetings from Germany

Re: 16 layers of ifs, Who dare challenge this? [modified]

Megidolaon23-Feb-09 23:03

Megidolaon

23-Feb-09 23:03

16 layers...that guy must be insane Unsure | :~

modified on Friday, February 27, 2009 6:54 AM

FTW?

Rotted Frog15-Jan-09 8:02

Rotted Frog

15-Jan-09 8:02

This particular gem was found in the code of a recently departed team member who described himself as a C# 'Expert'. Everytime someone in the team looks at his code for more than 5 minutes, they find another howler. Truly shocking.

public bool SelectedByDefault
{
  get { return _defaultSelected; }
  set
  {
    // no, check isn't pointless, because serialisation can assign a null to a bool
    if (value != null)
    {
      _defaultSelected = value;
    }
    else
    {
      _defaultSelected = false;
    }
  }
}

Re: FTW?

PIEBALDconsult15-Jan-09 8:26

PIEBALDconsult

15-Jan-09 8:26

Just a different take on a common situation.

Re: FTW?

geegeegeegee15-Jan-09 17:50

geegeegeegee

15-Jan-09 17:50

lol, arguments in code comments.

Re: FTW?

Chris Maunder15-Jan-09 19:11

Chris Maunder

15-Jan-09 19:11

Here, here might need this: ?

cheers,
Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

Re: FTW?

Rotted Frog16-Jan-09 3:21

Rotted Frog

16-Jan-09 3:21

Even more surprising is that it appeared convinced this was true even though the compiler gives an unreachable code warning and tell you that the check will always return true. But he probably didn't notice it hidden amongst the other 200 warnings. Sigh.

Re: FTW? [modified]

cybertone16-Jan-09 19:00

cybertone

16-Jan-09 19:00

By the way, C# compiler (with optimization option 'on') generates these IL instructions for set accessor:

ldarg.0
ldarg.1
stfld bool <reference_to_local_field>
ret

;

so, at the C# level it whould be:

this._<reference_to_local_field> = value;

;

So, this construction is obviously needless Big Grin | :-D

modified on Monday, January 19, 2009 1:56 AM

Re: FTW?

Brian C Hart18-Jan-09 13:05

Brian C Hart

18-Jan-09 13:05

A colleague says perhaps this guy just plain didn't trust that said field would be checked actually *in* the serialization code...not that anyone would want to risk an exception getting thrown for serializing a bool anyway.

Since when were bool variables ever null? Besides isn't that equivalent to false, or am I not a "C# Expert?"

-Brian

Sincerely Yours,
Brian Hart

Re: FTW?

kampr3t18-Jan-09 16:09

kampr3t

18-Jan-09 16:09

public bool SelectedByDefault{ get; set; }

why not like above ? Blush | :O

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