Representative snippet

error

A portion of our codebase was outsourced to an offshore company. Their classes tend to span several thousand SLOC, and here is a good example of the typical quality:

char[] invalidcharacters = Configuration.Settings.InvalidItemNameChars;
var processedName = name.Replace(",", "").Replace("'", "").Replace(".", " ").Replace("™", "").Replace("(", "").Replace(")", "").Replace("®", "").Replace("&", "").Replace("!", "");
processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\\s", "spacespace");
processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\\W", "").Replace("spacespace", " ").Trim();
processedName = string.Concat(processedName.Trim().Split(invalidcharacters)).Trim();

I am refactoring as necessary (it's too much of a timesink to try to fix everything, I just fix what's actively causing problems). This algorithm I can't change because it would break compatibility with several other modules that use the same algorithm (copy-pasta'd).

ratchet_freak

I'm halfway impressed they found 3 different methods to replace certain characters

and it's interesting that they replace . with a space

Buttembly_Coder

@joe.edwards said:

processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\s", "spacespace");

I found the WTF, it should be:

processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\\s", "spacespace",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

error

"space invaders" -> "spacespacespaceinvaders" -> " spaceinvaders"

mikeTheLiar

SPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCEEEEEE!!!!!!!

error

@Buttembly Coder said:

@joe.edwards said:
processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\s", "spacespace");

I found the WTF, it should be:

processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\\s", "spacespace",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

That should take care of those uppercase whitespace characters.

TGV

@joe.edwards said:

processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\\s", "spacespace"); ... Replace("spacespace", " ").Trim();

I can't befuckinglieve it. How in the holy name of all that's based on Boolean algebra can someone think it's a good idea to replace a space by a word? And then replace that word by a space? Bloody hell.

error

@TGV said:

@joe.edwards said:
processedName = Regex.Replace(processedName, "\s", "spacespace"); ... Replace("spacespace", " ").Trim();
I can't befuckinglieve it. How in the holy name of all that's based on Boolean algebra can someone think it's a good idea to replace a space by a word? And then replace that word by a space? Bloody hell.

Well, see, they wanted to replace all non-word characters (\W) and space was a non-word character, so the obvious solution was to ~~use a character class~~ pick a word no one was using and temporarily swap it in and out. Shame it doesn't round-trip when the content contains the word "space" (which is actually kind of likely given the context of where this is used).

TGV

@joe.edwards said:

Well, see, they wanted to replace all non-word characters (\W) ...

Sure, I got that. But the ineptitude! Not only multiple passes and trims and whatever, but using words to ... boggling.