Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

Ender.uNF posted:

The real horror is MAX_PATH, a gift that will keep on giving.

You mean PATH_MAX?

# ? Aug 26, 2013 17:00

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 05:09

npe: Oct 15, 2004

For some serious coding horrors, think of how you'd use the win32 api hack/workaround for longer paths from a C# application. The horror at the time I had to do this was me.

Edit: for a good discussion of why this is so horrific to do, see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bclteam/archive/2007/02/13/long-paths-in-net-part-1-of-3-kim-hamilton.aspx

npe fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 26, 2013

# ? Aug 26, 2013 17:08

EssOEss: Oct 23, 2006; 128-bit approved

The disease of MAX_PATH can even cross OS boundaries. The Team Foundation client plugin for Eclipse running on Mac OS X complains about MAX_PATH being hit at the 260 character limit.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 17:12

Gazpacho: Jun 18, 2004; by Fluffdaddy; Slippery Tilde

The real horror is seeing MAX_PATH used all over a project to statically size strings that aren't even paths.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 17:18

Dr Monkeysee: Oct 11, 2002; just a fox like a hundred thousand others; Nap Ghost

Ender.uNF posted:

The real horror is MAX_PATH, a gift that will keep on giving.

I had Visual Studio fail to build a project due to a source tree that had too deep a directory structure. It was fine for a long time until I added one more subfolder that broke its back and suddenly it was failing the build as "12 of 12 projects built successfully; build failed". There was no error message in the build output even after turning on maximum verbosity. Just "everything built successfully; build failed." After reorganizing the folders to be less nested everything magically worked again.

This wasn't a Java project so I guess the horror was me.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 17:56

Rocko Bonaparte: Mar 12, 2002; Every day is Friday!

You're already at a disadvantage in Visual Studio if you let it set up your sources under your Documents and Settings hierarchy since that just tacks on a bunch of other stuff. But I suppose you can swing the whole mess the other way and make another horror by putting your sources under C:\s or something.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 18:50

Dr Monkeysee: Oct 11, 2002; just a fox like a hundred thousand others; Nap Ghost

That was more or less what happened. My svn repo was under AppData/Local because That's How You Do Things in the brave new world of UAC. Moving it up to C:\ temporarily fixed the problem (though the directory structure was a legit horror and I fixed that too).

Another fun horror: if you run a local website under IIS and the folder is somewhere under your User directory instead of out in the wild of C:\ you end up with all kinds of weird static file handler permissions issues that are tricky to work around as you can't just slap an ACL on it and call it a day.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 18:52

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

npe posted:

For some serious coding horrors, think of how you'd use the win32 api hack/workaround for longer paths from a C# application. The horror at the time I had to do this was me.

Edit: for a good discussion of why this is so horrific to do, see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bclteam/archive/2007/02/13/long-paths-in-net-part-1-of-3-kim-hamilton.aspx

How the gently caress do they figure that it's reasonable for a long file name to bypass every other file name restriction, too? I guess it'd take a bunch of disk IO to check a really stupidly deep folder structure, but that doesn't strike me as a good reason, just a dumb excuse.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 19:23

Amarkov: Jun 21, 2010

We are using a unit test to initialize the database.

Except that the unit test does not actually check the configuration files, and thus attempts to initialize localhost:3306 and localhost:27017 regardless of where the rest of the build thinks the databases are located.

I have no words.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:26

No Safe Word: Feb 26, 2005

Windows path horrors? It makes me laugh to no end that poo poo like this still works:

code:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 10DD-E606

 Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs

07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          .
07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/29/2012  04:11 PM             1,466 Maple.gif
               1 File(s)          1,466 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  391,930,040,320 bytes free

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs>cd \

C:\>cd PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\TEMPLA~1\PRESEN~1

C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\TEMPLA~1\PRESEN~1>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 10DD-E606

 Directory of C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\TEMPLA~1\PRESEN~1

07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          .
07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/29/2012  04:11 PM             1,466 Maple.gif
               1 File(s)          1,466 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  391,930,040,320 bytes free

This is on Windows 8 x64.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:39

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Everything that has ever worked will continue to work, forever.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:42

pseudorandom name: May 6, 2007

No Safe Word posted:

Windows path horrors? It makes me laugh to no end that poo poo like this still works:

code:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 10DD-E606

 Directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs

07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          .
07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/29/2012  04:11 PM             1,466 Maple.gif
               1 File(s)          1,466 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  391,930,040,320 bytes free

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs>cd \

C:\>cd PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\TEMPLA~1\PRESEN~1

C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\TEMPLA~1\PRESEN~1>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 10DD-E606

 Directory of C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\TEMPLA~1\PRESEN~1

07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          .
07/22/2013  08:28 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/29/2012  04:11 PM             1,466 Maple.gif
               1 File(s)          1,466 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  391,930,040,320 bytes free

This is on Windows 8 x64.

That spreadsheet you created on Windows 3.11 and then updated once on Windows 95 before the Office 95 upgrade had better keep working, or else people will be pissed.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:44

Workaday Wizard: Oct 23, 2009; by Pragmatica

I am guilty of using PROGRA~1 more than once. Escaping paths is :effort:

E: This was on 32bit and for personal purposes only thankfully.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:51

Dr Monkeysee: Oct 11, 2002; just a fox like a hundred thousand others; Nap Ghost

pseudorandom name posted:

That spreadsheet you created on Windows 3.11 and then updated once on Windows 95 before the Office 95 upgrade had better keep working, or else people will be pissed.

No joke this accounts for a significant number of Windows horrors. Dominant market share is a double-edged sword.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:52

omeg: Sep 3, 2012

pseudorandom name posted:

That spreadsheet you created on Windows 3.11 and then updated once on Windows 95 before the Office 95 upgrade had better keep working, or else people will be pissed.

code:

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil behavior query disable8dot3
The registry state of NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation is 1 (Disable 8dot3 name creation on all volumes).

It broke!

# ? Aug 26, 2013 21:16

pseudorandom name: May 6, 2007

TechNet says it is per-volume now.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 21:20

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

qntm posted:

See also: GNU make.

Example: You can't build busybox in a directory where any component has
a colon in it. Odd case, yes, but it really annoyed me.

I think the problem is with the make language itself, rather than the
GNU make implementation. I recall being told that make's awful syntax is
from the fact that the designed didn't know how to properly use yacc, so
the first implementation had a hacked together parser. He later learned
how to do it properly, but by then he had a user, so couldn't fix it,
and we've been paying for this ever since.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 21:58

Factor Mystic: Mar 20, 2006; Baby's First Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Shinku ABOOKEN posted:

I am guilty of using PROGRA~1 more than once. Escaping paths is

E: This was on 32bit and for personal purposes only thankfully.

mklink /d "c:\program files (x86)" c:\bin32
mklink /d "c:\program files" c:\bin

# ? Aug 26, 2013 22:12

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Amarkov posted:

We are using a unit test to initialize the database.

Except that the unit test does not actually check the configuration files, and thus attempts to initialize localhost:3306 and localhost:27017 regardless of where the rest of the build thinks the databases are located.

I have no words.

You could always fix the test to read the config file.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 22:29

Amarkov: Jun 21, 2010

Volmarias posted:

You could always fix the test to read the config file.

Or I could do the sane thing and make it a separate part of the automated build process.

Then again, all of the configuration files look auto-generated, so it's conceivable that nobody actually understood what Maven does.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 23:00

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Amarkov posted:

Or I could do the sane thing and make it a separate part of the automated build process.

Then again, all of the configuration files look auto-generated, so it's conceivable that nobody actually understood what Maven does.

You mean aside from backing up the internet?

# ? Aug 26, 2013 23:31

Opinion Haver: Apr 9, 2007

Edison was a dick posted:

Example: You can't build busybox in a directory where any component has
a colon in it. Odd case, yes, but it really annoyed me.

I think the problem is with the make language itself, rather than the
GNU make implementation. I recall being told that make's awful syntax is
from the fact that the designed didn't know how to properly use yacc, so
the first implementation had a hacked together parser. He later learned
how to do it properly, but by then he had a user, so couldn't fix it,
and we've been paying for this ever since.

Are you posting from emacs with auto-fill-mode or something?

# ? Aug 27, 2013 00:51

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

We follow PEP 8 around here.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 01:03

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

yaoi prophet posted:

Are you posting from emacs with auto-fill-mode or something?

Firefox with Vimperator plugin. I opened up vim with ^I to fix something since I find text boxes too constraining and habitually reformatted the text.

I get called a nerd by professional software engineers for doing this.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 08:52

TheresaJayne: Jul 1, 2011

Gazpacho posted:

The real horror is seeing MAX_PATH used all over a project to statically size strings that aren't even paths.

The weird thing is that when i see MAX_PATH in the forum i hear a voice in my head saying something like
"Max Path sat down at his desk, when there was a knock on his door. "Yep" he said as a gorgeous gal drifted in the opening door."

# ? Aug 27, 2013 09:19

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Monkeyseesaw posted:

I had Visual Studio fail to build a project due to a source tree that had too deep a directory structure. It was fine for a long time until I added one more subfolder that broke its back and suddenly it was failing the build as "12 of 12 projects built successfully; build failed". There was no error message in the build output even after turning on maximum verbosity. Just "everything built successfully; build failed." After reorganizing the folders to be less nested everything magically worked again.

This wasn't a Java project so I guess the horror was me.

I had a working and building solution on my computer that failed on another dev's. Turns out that with my source root being "c:\dev", everything was fine, but the guy has his stuff in "c:\SourceControl", which made the total path including a ridiculously long and verbose service reference too long on his machine.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 10:52

tef: May 30, 2004; -> some l-system crap ->

No Safe Word posted:

Windows path horrors? It makes me laugh to no end that poo poo like this still works:

This is on Windows 8 x64.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/07/15/439261.aspx

If you delete a file and create a new one with the same name it inherits the properties of the old one

# ? Aug 27, 2013 11:24

IT BEGINS: Jan 15, 2009; I don't know how to make analogies

php:

<?
extract($vals);
$ref = $referencenotes;
if (!strstr ("XDXD", "$CUSTCODE$")) {
    $refnum      = $vals["referencenotes2"];
    $brk = "; ";
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["referencenotes3"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custponum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custinvnum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custdeptnum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["department"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;
}
?>

Somehow, I don't think think this was the best way to handle this. If you're wondering what $CUSTCODE$ is, seems they decided to implement a pre-processor for php. :what:

# ? Aug 27, 2013 14:13

substitute: Aug 30, 2003; you for my mum

Vasja posted:

php:

<?
extract($vals);
$ref = $referencenotes;
if (!strstr ("XDXD", "$CUSTCODE$")) {
    $refnum      = $vals["referencenotes2"];
    $brk = "; ";
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["referencenotes3"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custponum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custinvnum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custdeptnum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["department"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;
}
?>

Somehow, I don't think think this was the best way to handle this. If you're wondering what $CUSTCODE$ is, seems they decided to implement a pre-processor for php. :what:

Also, extract() creates key/value pairs from an array. So, they could use $whatever instead of $vals['whatever'] after the extract.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 14:43

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

Vasja posted:

php:

<?
extract($vals);
$ref = $referencenotes;
if (!strstr ("XDXD", "$CUSTCODE$")) {
    $refnum      = $vals["referencenotes2"];
    $brk = "; ";
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["referencenotes3"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custponum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custinvnum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["custdeptnum"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;

    $refnum      = $vals["department"];
    if (strlen ($refnum))
        $ref .= (strlen ($ref) ? "$brk" :"").$refnum;
}
?>

Somehow, I don't think think this was the best way to handle this. If you're wondering what $CUSTCODE$ is, seems they decided to implement a pre-processor for php. :what:

PHP code:

$keys = array("referencenotes");
if (!strstr ("XDXD", "$CUSTCODE$"))
  array_push($keys, "referencenotes2", "referencenotes3", "custponum", "custinvnum", "custdeptnum", "department");
$refarr = array();
foreach ($keys as $k)
  if (strlen($vals[$k]))
    $refarr[] = $vals[$k];
$ref = implode("; ", $refarr);

What I do every day.

(I'm pretty sure one of the array_intersect family functions could avoid that loop and make it fewer lines, but they still seem really useless to me. All I ever want is to pull out the values from one array using another as the keys to pull out, and that's the one thing I can't find something for.)

# ? Aug 27, 2013 15:02

IT BEGINS: Jan 15, 2009; I don't know how to make analogies

nielsm posted:

What I do every day.

PHP, uniting us through horrible code and worse coders.

I just don't understand how people who have been using a language for upwards of a decade don't know about its most basic features or best practices. I end up saying things like "there are array functions now, and you probably shouldn't use globals and extract() everywhere" or "pg_result was deprecated in 2001 and removed from all available documentation in 2003, why is it still being added to our codebase in 2013?" way too often.

IT BEGINS fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Aug 27, 2013

# ? Aug 27, 2013 15:17

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

GNU BC is a project so old its version control is a series of tarballs on ftp.gnu.org.
This is a problem, since if you try to compile its latest release, which was made in 2000, trying to use its built-in math library causes it to segfault.
A compiler optimisation added to modern gcc will optimise away calls to the function that allocates space for functions.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 18:42

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

Edison was a dick posted:

GNU BC is a project so old its version control is a series of tarballs on ftp.gnu.org.
This is a problem, since if you try to compile its latest release, which was made in 2000, trying to use its built-in math library causes it to segfault.
A compiler optimisation added to modern gcc will optimise away calls to the function that allocates space for functions.

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bc/

Last release was made in 2006.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 20:07

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

Suspicious Dish posted:

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bc/

Last release was made in 2006.

Alpha release, and 7 years is still too long.

The tip-off is much appreciated though. I'll try it out; I much prefer
using upstream sources to maintaining patches.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 21:49

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

alpha.gnu.org is just the name of the gnu project hosting site, it's not an alpha release.

But yes, GNU bc has been without a maintainer for a long time now, and every distribution adds a patch to that release to fix an obvious crasher bug. It's an unfortunate state of affairs.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 22:33

ShoulderDaemon: Oct 9, 2003; support goon fund; Taco Defender

Just use nickle instead, honestly.

# ? Aug 27, 2013 22:43

Opinion Haver: Apr 9, 2007

OK, so techically this isn't really a PHP horror since you could do this in any language. But I'm going to put it in the 'lol, PHP' category anyway.

# ? Aug 28, 2013 05:14

senrath: Nov 4, 2009; Look Professor, a destruct switch!

that link posted:

Well I need to have users added to the operating system, and I'd like that to be through a web browser. (Again this is on a closed network).

that link posted:

I agree with you, and I'm aware of the security holes. But this isn't a publicly faced server, it's on a closed network. It has now become more frustrating as to why it doesn't work, I'm going to use a different method.

that link posted:

I mean it's on a closed network and just a few friends are using it so

I agree with the one comment about this being awe inspiringly bad.

# ? Aug 28, 2013 06:23

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

Suspicious Dish posted:

alpha.gnu.org is just the name of the gnu project hosting site, it's not an alpha release.

alpha.gnu.org is listed on the bc project page under the test releases heading.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was intended to be a stable release, but the maintainer forgot the credentials for ftp.gnu.org.

# ? Aug 28, 2013 08:10

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 05:09

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

yaoi prophet posted:

OK, so techically this isn't really a PHP horror since you could do this in any language. But I'm going to put it in the 'lol, PHP' category anyway.

I don't know what's worse, the OP or all of the people who don't understand why this is bad.

# ? Aug 28, 2013 12:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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