Code WTF? - 2011 edition

So today I was helping another developer who was running into some issues in production code - there is a file import that works fine up to a point, but for some reason, a particular file causes it grief.

As of this posting, we still haven’t found the problem - but during lunch, I had to post what we DID find!

As we were debugging through the parsing library, I ran into a bit of code written by Random Developer.   At first caught it me off guard, then left me quite literally, Laughing Out Loud.

It starts out simple enough - even has a comment:

   1:  

   2: /// <summary>Parses a String to a bool</summary>

   3: public static bool Bool<T>(this T value)

   4:  {

Not bad - I think that for this particular process, the Generic is probably overkill - but we will go with it:

Next, lets parse this thing up:

   1: if (value == null || value.ToString().Length == 0) return false;

   2:             try { return Convert.ToBoolean(value); }

   3:             catch { }

First, if you are using Generics, you have a .NET framework that supports TryParse on all the types **.  Yes, a TryParse is a bit more convoluted and requires the use of a generally misunderstood Out parameter - Oh, and a HUGE performance increase if you are parsing a value that fails.

But I’ll over-look that for now, because it is just a sign of what is to come…

So, assuming that the above parse didn’t actually return a properly parsed value, Random Developer decided to add an extra bit of code:

   1: string testValue = value.ToString();

   2:             if (testValue.Empty()) return false;

Uh, OK - seems a bit redundant to me - but we haven’t gotten to the best (and LOL) part yet:

Our friend, Random Developer decided to check this value that didn’t parse into a Boolean against a list of 'Yeses' -  Huh? List of Yeses?

   1: var yeses = new List<string> { "1", "true", "yes", "y", "yeah", 

   2:                             "yea", "ya", "yo", "yesh", "indeed", 

   3:                             "uhuh", "yep", "yah", "damnstraight", 

   4:                             "valid", "damn skippy", "you betcha", 

   5:                             "bobs your uncle", "all right", "ok", 

   6:                             "sure", "why not", "of course", "agreed", 

   7:                             "fair enough", "absolutely", "right", 

   8:                             "if i have too" };

   9: return yeses.Contains(testValue.ToLower());

Yep, Bob’s your Uncle, You Betcha, Damn Skippy - if it is one of these values, it must mean it is TRUE! 

At least they used ToLower().

So, Random Developer - you officially made my year on my random code WTF?!

** It also supports String.IsNullOrEmpty - but that’s just a personal preference - instead of individually checking for Null and no Length…