The Saddest Words: What If

Date:

Share:

Conditional statements, we would hope, are one of the most basic and well understood constructs in any programming language. Hope, of course, is for fools and suckers, so let’s take a look at a few short snippets.

Our first installment comes from Jonas.

if (!checkAndDelete(Definitions.DirectoryName, currentTime)); 

I appreciate the comment, which informs us that this empty statement is intentional. Why it’s intentional remains mysterious.

Jonas found this while going through linter warnings. After fixing this, there are only 25,000 more warnings to go.

Brodey has a similar construct, but from a very different language.

If (Session.Item(Session.SessionID & "Origional") IsNot Nothing) Then
End If

I have to give bonus points for the origional spelling of “original”. But spelling aside, there’s a hint of something sinister here- we’re concatenating strings with the SessionId– I don’t know what is going wrong here, but it’s definitely something.

Our last little snippet comes from Midiane. While not a conditional, it shows a misunderstanding of either booleans or comments.

$mail->SMTPAuth = false; // turn on SMTP authentication

The comment clearly is out of date with the code (which is the main reason we shouldn’t repeat what is in the code as a comment). At least, we hope the comment is just out of date. A worse scenario is that setting the flag equal to false enables it.

Source link

Subscribe to our magazine

━ more like this

Wat Pho Reclining Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand

The reclining Buddha is 46 meters long (about 150 feet) and gold-plated, and represents the Buddha entering complete spiritual enlightenment. The soles of...

Accountant warns daughter of her boyfriend’s risky real-estate venture, but warnings backfire as she claims that his “professional concerns” are perceived as personal judgment:...

Mixing work and personal life is already a risky approach, but when you bring your partner and your father into the mix, you're just...

‘Stranger Things’ Lets It Rip to Kick Off Its Final Season

The conclusion to Netflix and the Duffer Brothers’...

ETHAN HAWKE Compares His THE LOWDOWN Character to a Raccoon Eating a Burnt Marshmallow, Talks The Ease of Working w/ Peter Dinklage and More,...

Had a great conversation with Ethan Hawke on TV Topics podcast about some of the best work of...