Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

stackoverflow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 245 posts

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#141

Post by im3w1l »

glimcat wrote: post #4

As long as we're playing the "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" game again, here's the relevant patio11 article: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... If you try to validate names, or if you don't safely escape names along with your other user-input strings, you're gonna have a bad time.

This list is useless, because trying to follow it is impossibly ambitious. Which of these do I need to support for my system to work for X% of users with X+Y % being able to work around the limitations?

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#142

Post by marssaxman »

strlen wrote: post #136
pjungwir wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a few years my airplane boarding passes said I was PAULA JUNGWIRTH because A is my middle initial. I got a few questions trying to board. I've noticed the last couple years that they print with a space now.

When I flew Lufthansa, I was granted an honorary Ph.D. My official name is "Aleksandr Feinberg" -- it's transliterated from Cyrillics (hence the "ks") and Russian version of "Alexander" does not put an e between the d and r -- which Lufthansa decided to print on my boarding pass as Dr. Aleksan Feinberg

I recently moved to a house on a street named "Martin Luther King Junior Way East". The service rep must have bumped the tab key while I was signing up for DSL, because I now get mail addressed to "Mars Saxman Junior Way East".

The funny part is that the street name is still filled out in all of its glorious detail - but the capitalization is different, which tells me they did some kind of zip code based address sanitization.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#143

Post by kimlastname »

R_Edward wrote: post #107
mjn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that's annoying to me is that governments and employers increasingly believe many of these things, partly because they want to cross-reference names and match canonical forms. My given names in English are Mark Jason, and that's on my birth certificate. In Greek, they're Μάρκος Ιάσονας, which are the equivalents, and that's on my municipal birth records there (registered as a foreign birth at the time of ba…

Growing up, my parents called me by my middle name, as I share a first name with my dad. (I'd rather be an Edward than a Ralph anyway.) When giving my name to someone, I tell them I'm Edward , as telling them I'm R. Edward just sounds pretentious. But if I'm beginning a relationship with a doctor's office or lawyer, or filling in a tax form, it's Ralph E. Lastname, because that's what's on my birth certificate and SS…

My name is Kim and I'm a male. Try convincing Americans (and other English speaking countries) about that...

One example: Many years ago I subscribed to TIME and filled out a form where I checked "Mr." Apparently the person who typed in my name decided to "correct" this error and I became a "Mrs."... and I wasn't even married :-)

The company I work at has offices in different cities, so most of the communication are done by email and instant messaging. I see a clear difference between the messages from people who know my gender, and those who probably think I'm female. Even attempts at flirting...

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#144

Post by caf »

lostlogin wrote: post #130
pjungwir wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a few years my airplane boarding passes said I was PAULA JUNGWIRTH because A is my middle initial. I got a few questions trying to board. I've noticed the last couple years that they print with a space now.

I've never understood why people entering data into a system enter an initial. It's a partial entry. You wouldn't enter a date of birth as 3. On further thought, actually, they do. Then dismiss all the error messages and quit the program to get past the system keeping them in the field waiting for completion. Users seem hell bent on breaking our databases.

Do you think it's impossible that someone's middle name is only one letter long?

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#145

Post by caf »

kimlastname wrote: post #143
R_Edward wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up, my parents called me by my middle name, as I share a first name with my dad. (I'd rather be an Edward than a Ralph anyway.) When giving my name to someone, I tell them I'm Edward , as telling them I'm R. Edward just sounds pretentious. But if I'm beginning a relationship with a doctor's office or lawyer, or filling in a tax form, it's Ralph E. Lastname, because that's what's on my birth certificate and SS…

My name is Kim and I'm a male. Try convincing Americans (and other English speaking countries) about that... One example: Many years ago I subscribed to TIME and filled out a form where I checked "Mr." Apparently the person who typed in my name decided to "correct" this error and I became a "Mrs."... and I wasn't even married :-) The company I work at has offices in different cities, so most of the communication are…

Males named Kim go relatively unremarked in Australia at least, perhaps because there have been three well-known male national political figures named Kim in the last 40 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Edward_Beazley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Beazley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Carr

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#146

Post by anotherevan »

mjn wrote: post #65
glimcat wrote: post #4

As long as we're playing the "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" game again, here's the relevant patio11 article: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... If you try to validate names, or if you don't safely escape names along with your other user-input strings, you're gonna have a bad time.

One thing that's annoying to me is that governments and employers increasingly believe many of these things, partly because they want to cross-reference names and match canonical forms. My given names in English are Mark Jason, and that's on my birth certificate. In Greek, they're Μάρκος Ιάσονας, which are the equivalents, and that's on my municipal birth records there (registered as a foreign birth at the time of ba…

Not sure why, but your story reminded me of a friend of mine who's always gone by the name, "Mick" (a common shortening for the name Michael in Australia.) The thing is, neither his first or middle names are Michael. It was just a nickname that stuck when he was a kid.

I kid you not, at his wedding when the celebrant said, "Do you Susan, take this man Brian..." his bride exclaimed, "Who's Brian?"

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#147

Post by anotherevan »

speeder wrote: post #42
glimcat wrote: post #4

As long as we're playing the "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" game again, here's the relevant patio11 article: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... If you try to validate names, or if you don't safely escape names along with your other user-input strings, you're gonna have a bad time.

My name fail to register surprisingly often, even here in Brazil. It is Hélder Maurício Gomes Ferreira Filho Common reasons for failure is being too long and having non ASCII characters, but sometimes it fails for other reasons, for example do not allow me to register without a middle name ( I don't haven't one actually... ), me confused and not knowing how to register Filho ( it is not a family name, neither a surna…

It get's worse. A friend of mine has a hyphenated name, "Kerry-Jean". The hyphen alone often breaks things.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#148

Post by njharman »

jonlucc wrote: post #132
njharman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jr. is absolutely part of my official name in the USA. It is the only distinction between my and my father's name. Many forms have a specific spot for suffix.

Are you implying that two people (you and your father) can't have identical names in the US?

No I'm stating that Jr. is an official part of Norman John Harman Jr., my name. It is on my birth certificate, filled out on my tax return, etc. In any case were I'm required to use my real name if I used Norman John Harman Sr. I would be committing fraud. Likewise fraud if I left off the Jr. in an attempt to confuse with or impersonate my father.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#149

Post by thanhquanky »

jjindev wrote: post #39
tomasien wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend named Nan, and I posted every "NaN" error I got in my code on her Facebook wall for about a year. She hated it.

plot twist, my friend's anglicized name is Nan, but in Vietnamese I think it is a number. (nth birth)

năm is number 5 in Vietnamese, not Nan

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#150

Post by thanhquanky »

jjindev wrote: post #39
tomasien wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend named Nan, and I posted every "NaN" error I got in my code on her Facebook wall for about a year. She hated it.

plot twist, my friend's anglicized name is Nan, but in Vietnamese I think it is a number. (nth birth)

năm is number 5 in Vietnamese, not Nan
Post reply on HN