IsNull or IsNotNull?

TheRider

I think we had this (or something similar) before. But anyway. I was getting furious when I just saw that snippet in one of my colleagues code:


  public static final boolean IsNull(Object inObject) {

<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp>return (null == inObject);</nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp>
<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp>

<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp>
  }

  

  public static final boolean IsNotNull(Object inObject) {

  </nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp>

<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp> return (!IsNull(inObject));</nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp>
<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp>

<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><nbsp> }</nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp></nbsp>

Of course, that piece of sh..t is called heavily from the rest of his code. I'm on to a little refactoring. As I already explained to another colleague of mine: the best refactoring consists of:

select the code to refactor
press the "Delete" button

Or am I missing some great advantage to the above code?

(BTW: sorry for the strange formatting of the code. I can't seem to master the editing tool of this forum)

Ancient_Hacker

Perhaps they wanted to bottleneck all the tests against null in order to:

(1) Sometime in the future count all the comparisons against null.

(2) If necessary add some patch in there where the object might be not null, but equivalent, such as the empty string, or "NULL" , or some other data that might have sneaked into the data

(3) As a quick thing to eventually change and get a slight performance boost. :)

valerion

Perhaps it's incase the value of NULL changes in the future? A quick change to the function and disaster is avoided!

Claxon

Ooooh yummy! With that you can write...

if ( !IsNotNull( obj ) ) {

...

}

:D

Vechni

they're getting there. appears they have moved on and progressed from the doNothing() and isTrue() methods.

Kokuma

Your colleague forgot the following function :

public static final boolean IsFileNotFound(Object inObject) {
    return (!IsNull(inObject) && !IsNotNull(inObject));
}

Claxon

@Vechni said:

they're getting there. appears they have moved on and progressed from the doNothing() and isTrue() methods.

Ooh what a good idea.... ;)

if( IsTrue( !IsNotNull(obj) )) {

misguided

@Claxon said:

@Vechni said:
they're getting there. appears they have moved on and progressed from the doNothing() and isTrue() methods.

Ooh what a good idea.... ;)

if( IsTrue( !IsNotNull(obj) )) {

...

Oh screw you guys. I'm gonna go become a hermit somewhere there's no electricity, because clearly technology is retarded.

ShadowWolf

@TheRider said:

I think we had this (or something similar) before. But anyway. I was getting furious when I just saw that snippet in one of my colleagues code:

public static final boolean IsNull(Object inObject) {
<NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP>return (null == inObject);</NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP>
<NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP>
<NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP>} public static final boolean IsNotNull(Object inObject) { </NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP>
<NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP>return (!IsNull(inObject));</NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP>
<NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP>

<NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP><NBSP>}</NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP></NBSP>

Of course, that piece of sh..t is called heavily from the rest of his code. I'm on to a little refactoring. As I already explained to another colleague of mine: the best refactoring consists of:

select the code to refactor

press the "Delete" button

Or am I missing some great advantage to the above code?

(BTW: sorry for the strange formatting of the code. I can't seem to master the editing tool of this forum)

What about

public static final boolean MightBeNull(Object inObject) {
boolean retVal = false;
return true;
}

asuffield

@TheRider said:

I think we had this (or something similar) before

It is a very common example of brillant behaviour. We see it a lot because people do it a lot.

asuffield

@misguided said:

Oh screw you guys. I'm gonna go become a hermit somewhere there's no electricity, because clearly technology is retarded.

It's people that are retarded, so you need to go somewhere there's no people.

Conveniently, this is what the word "hermit" means.