Search: .lenght - Github • Hacker News Board

Search: .lenght - Github

#1

Post by uyhayuy » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 5:31 PM UTC

Search: .lenght - Github
github.com

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#2

Post by southern » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

A common typo, it seems. But I'm a bit confused as to why this was submitted.

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#3

Post by kissickas » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:47 PM UTC

Is there any context to this or are you just pointing the humor of out how common this is?

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#4

Post by amirhhz » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:47 PM UTC

southern wrote: post #2

A common typo, it seems. But I'm a bit confused as to why this was submitted.

In JavaScript, if you check for a non-existent property on a variable (e.g. aVar.lenght vs aVar.length) it will return "undefined". So people often rely on this behaviour to check if something is an array or not (no comment on whether this is good or bad), with:

    if(somethingThatMightBeAnArray.length){
        // do things with array
    }

So misspelling of length can be making a lot of code out there behave in an unexpected way.

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#5

Post by kaffeinecoma » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:51 PM UTC

southern wrote: post #2

A common typo, it seems. But I'm a bit confused as to why this was submitted.

In a static language this would be flagged as an error. I assume something less than ideal happens in languages such as Ruby.

I once worked at a company where a very early piece of code had a typo "properites" instead of "properties". This misspelling became institutionalized, and was used throughout the codebase because it was deemed too expensive to fix. And this was with a static language (with good IDE refactoring support)!

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#6

Post by timdorr » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:52 PM UTC

"hieght" is also a good one: https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=JavaScript&...

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#7

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#8

Post by Navarr » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:57 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

The first results are all comments and spellcheckers.

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#9

Post by palish » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 6:58 PM UTC

kaffeinecoma wrote: post #5

southern wrote: post #2

A common typo, it seems. But I'm a bit confused as to why this was submitted.

In a static language this would be flagged as an error. I assume something less than ideal happens in languages such as Ruby. I once worked at a company where a very early piece of code had a typo "properites" instead of "properties". This misspelling became institutionalized, and was used throughout the codebase because it was deemed too expensive to fix. And this was with a static language (with good IDE refactorin…

I'm confused as to why they couldn't simply:

  grep -R properites .

Re: Search: .lenght - Github

#10

Post by chernevik » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 7:03 PM UTC

palish wrote: post #9

kaffeinecoma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a static language this would be flagged as an error. I assume something less than ideal happens in languages such as Ruby. I once worked at a company where a very early piece of code had a typo "properites" instead of "properties". This misspelling became institutionalized, and was used throughout the codebase because it was deemed too expensive to fix. And this was with a static language (with good IDE refactorin…

I'm confused as to why they couldn't simply: grep -R properites .

Perhaps they were using . . . something other than *nix.

EDIT: Justly downvoted chastised for attempting humor without understanding.