We have a webpage that contains a table with collapsible sections.   Straightforwardly, the code behind the show/hide links took the approach of (1) searching for the tr elements that need to be toggled, and (2) changing the .style.display property to "" or "none" as appropriate. Less straightforwardly, step #1 was implemented not with DOM methods, but by searching the innerHTML for a string starting with "<TR ID=DISPFILE_".   In uppercase, so it wouldn't work on Firefox which normalizes the tag names to lowercase. At least the original programmer was consistent: Step #2 was implement by a similar text search for "STYLE='display: none'".

The Chr() = Convert.ToChar() thing makes some sense, but why int.Parse("13") instead of just 13?

The impressiveness of (for example) a 87,178,291,200-element search space for 14-letter anagrams should have gotten the original author to use less permissiveness in choosing an algorithm. If he could miss such an obvious rectification for the problem, he doesn't deserve to earn any kind of certification in software development.

I spent this afternoon trying to figure out why my code was throwing an exception. I tracked it down to the line

if (strProtocol == FALSE)

which should have been

if (strProtocol.IsEmpty() == FALSE)

So why did the original compile in the first place? Because FALSE is #defined as 0, and coincidentally so is NULL, and our string class has an operator==(const char*) — which does not properly check for NULL.

So, was this a replacement for an older program that used "19 +"?

You don't need to check for nulls, because SUM will automatically exclude them. Don't know why they wouldn't use a TIME column, unless they were using SQLite, but even there you can just do:

SELECT strftime('%H', TimeText) AS Hour, SUM(Cost) FROM MyTable GROUP BY Hour;

I did eventually decide to move the body of each loop into its own function. Still uglier than I'd like it to be, but yes, I was reluctant to rewrite it, especially when the problem I was trying to fix turned out to be somewhere else.

I found this function in the service I'm having to debug. I've omitted a few hundred lines of the code so that you may more clearly see the control flow.

void ProcessMessage()
{
if ( )
{

}

if ( )
{

}

if ( )
{

}

if ( )
{

}

while ( )
{
if ( )
{
continue;
}

  if ( )
  {
     continue;
  }

  if ( )
  {
     continue;
  }

  if ( && )
  {
     if ( || )
     {
        if ( )
        {

        }
        else
        {

        }

        continue;
     }
  }

  if ( )
  {
     continue;
  }


  for ( ; ; )
  {
     if ( )
     {

     }

     if ( )
     {
        if ( )
        {

        }

        continue;
     }

     if ( )
     {
        if ( )
        {

        }

        continue;
     }

     if ( )
     {
        if ( )
        {

        }
        else
        {

        }

        if ( || || ( && ))
        {
           if ( )
           {

           }
        }
        else
        {
           if ( )
           {

           }
        }

        continue;
     }

     if ( )
     {
        for ( ; ; )
        {
           if ( )
           {
              continue;
           }

           if ( )
           {
              if ( )
              {

              }
              else
              {

              }

              if ( )
              {

              }

              break;
           }
           else if ( )
           {
              if ( || )
              {
                 if ( )
                 {
                    if ( )
                    {

                    }
                 }
              }

              if ( )
              {

              }
              else
              {

              }

              continue;
           }
           else
           {
              if ( )
              {

              }

              break;
           }

How about

try
{
hr = Operation1();
if (!SUCCESS(hr)) throw hr;

hr = Operation2();
if (!SUCCESS(hr)) throw hr;

hr = Operator3();
if (!SUCCESS(hr)) throw hr;

// ...

}
catch (HRESULT hErr)
{
// ...
}

?

Many C compilers (and ancient C++ compilers) don't support the bool type. The expression (0==0) has the advantage of having type bool when possible and int otherwise.

Some code I encountered yesterday included:

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(client) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(client))

I think it's just a typo.

I've seriously used code like that to check for NaN.

Right. It's a CString.

"%253F" → "%3F" → "?". I don't know of any standard that encodes a question mark that way.

Shortly before my co-worker left for vacation today, he wrote something like this:

strNew.Replace("%20", " ");
strNew.Replace("%21", "!");
strNew.Replace("%22", """);
strNew.Replace("%23", "#");
strNew.Replace("%24", "$");
strNew.Replace("%25", "%");
strNew.Replace("%26", "&");
strNew.Replace("%27", "'");
strNew.Replace("%28", "(");
strNew.Replace("%29", ")");
strNew.Replace("%2A", "*");
strNew.Replace("%2B", "+");
strNew.Replace("%2C", ",");
strNew.Replace("%2D", "-");
strNew.Replace("%2E", ".");
strNew.Replace("%2F", "/");
strNew.Replace("%2a", "*");
strNew.Replace("%2b", "+");
strNew.Replace("%2c", ",");
strNew.Replace("%2d", "-");
strNew.Replace("%2e", ".");
strNew.Replace("%2f", "/");
strNew.Replace("%3A", ":");
strNew.Replace("%3B", ";");
strNew.Replace("%3C", "<");
strNew.Replace("%3D", "=");
strNew.Replace("%3E", ">");
strNew.Replace("%3F", "?");
strNew.Replace("%3a", ":");
strNew.Replace("%3b", ";");
strNew.Replace("%3c", "<");
strNew.Replace("%3d", "=");
strNew.Replace("%3e", ">");
strNew.Replace("%3f", "?");
strNew.Replace("%40", "@");
strNew.Replace("%5B", "[");
strNew.Replace("%5C", "\\");
strNew.Replace("%5D", "]");
strNew.Replace("%5E", "^");
strNew.Replace("%5F", "_");
strNew.Replace("%5b", "[");
strNew.Replace("%5c", "\\");
strNew.Replace("%5d", "]");
strNew.Replace("%5e", "^");
strNew.Replace("%5f", "_");
strNew.Replace("%60", "`");
strNew.Replace("%7B", "{");
strNew.Replace("%7C", "|");
strNew.Replace("%7D", "}");
strNew.Replace("%7E", "~");
strNew.Replace("%7b", "{");
strNew.Replace("%7c", "|");
strNew.Replace("%7d", "}");
strNew.Replace("%7e", "~");

It's an understatement to say that "goto came in handy" in the old style BASIC. You had to use GOTO because the language was severely lacking in control flow. DO...LOOP didn't exist, so you had to make those loops with GOTO. SELECT CASE didn't exist, so you had to use ON...GOTO. Multi-line IF statements didn't exist, so you either had to cram everything on one line or use GOTO. And exceptions didn't exist, so you used ON ERROR GOTO. So you ended up with code like this, filled with GOTO. And furthermore, line numbers were mandatory on every line, so it was very difficult to tell which lines were GOTO targets and which weren't. And this is what caused all the animosity towards the GOTO statement.

Recently, I stumbled across this little gem. I don't have the exact code handy, but the gist of it is:

nErrorCode = cFtpConn.SetHost(HOST);

if (nErrorCode == 0)
{
nErrorCode = cFtpConn.SetUser(USERNAME);

if (nErrorCode == 0)
{
nErrorCode = cFtpConn.SetPassword(PASSWORD);

  if (nErrorCode == 0)
  {
     nErrorCode = cFtpConn.SetPath(PATH);

     if (nErrorCode == 0)
     {
         nErrorCode = cFtpConn.SetFilename(FILENAME);

         if (nErrorCode == 0)
         {
            // Retrieve files, adding a few _more_ levels of `if`
         }
         else
         {
             Log("Error setting filename");
         }
     }
     else
     {
        Log("Error setting path");
     }
  }
  else
  {
     Log("Error setting password");
  }

}
else
{
Log("Error setting username");
}
}
else
{
Log("Error setting host");
}

It's easier for me to remember the == than it is to remember to write the condition backwards.

"all of the variables used were num1, num2, num3 etc. down the line. This is in several pages of code and it goes up to num26," They probably started off calling them a, b, c, ..., z, until learning that "you shouldn't use 1-letter variable names."

Good guess. I showed him how to do (B) today, and he was impressed at how much simpler it was.