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My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

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Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#51

Post by sebtoast »

Freak_NL wrote: post #31
tyingq wrote: post #2

I have seen apps that choke on much more common names. Like O'Brian. This post is a classic on various name issues: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

Tangentially related (rule 9); my girlfriend's surname contains an 'é'. I have yet to see a year go by without receiving mail having 'é' on the address label where the é should be. Explanation: echo "é" | iconv -t utf8 -f iso8859-15 We're Dutch, and the é is part of our language, and even part of the legacy character encoding standard everyone used before Unicode's widespread adoption. This is just a matter of code…

I'm French and I see this all the time, even Outlook, given the right conditions, will gives you this in the default folders, Inbox in French is "Boite de réception".

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#52

Post by fenwick67 »

matthewbauer wrote: post #43
jmull wrote: post #39

I don't get what's happening at the low-level for this to be a problem. It seems like you'd have to do something pretty stupid at the coding level to introduce a problem with "Null" by mistake . I'm sure it happens, but not more of an occasional issue. My best guess is that there are common old databases that did not have a first class null type where it was common practice to use the string "NULL" for that purpose.…

I think JavaScript is the biggest offender here. So this check would fail: if (lastName.toLowerCase() != null)

'null' != null in javascript, I'm pretty sure the only thing it weak equals is undefined.

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#53

Post by nteou987noeu »

Freak_NL wrote: post #31
tyingq wrote: post #2

I have seen apps that choke on much more common names. Like O'Brian. This post is a classic on various name issues: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

Tangentially related (rule 9); my girlfriend's surname contains an 'é'. I have yet to see a year go by without receiving mail having 'é' on the address label where the é should be. Explanation: echo "é" | iconv -t utf8 -f iso8859-15 We're Dutch, and the é is part of our language, and even part of the legacy character encoding standard everyone used before Unicode's widespread adoption. This is just a matter of code…

I feel your pain. My wife has a French first name with an acute accent over the "e" as well. Many forms will outright reject the accent, so I've taken to just not typing it most of the time. Being American, it doesn't really bother her, though. I know in some languages missing accents and other similar markings changes the pronunciation and meaning of words and can be very irritating to some.

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#54

Post by nteou987noeu »

justinv wrote: post #23
tyingq wrote: post #2

I have seen apps that choke on much more common names. Like O'Brian. This post is a classic on various name issues: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

Hyphens too. Source: have a hyphenated last name. "No special characters in this field".

I get that with periods in a street name. Like when I write "123 Main St.", and the web site checks against the USPS's database, it will either reject it outright for having "special" characters, or will say, "We didn't find that, but we found this similar address - '123 Main St', which should we use?" It's so fucking dumb.

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#55

Post by ajuc »

incongruity wrote: post #35
ajuc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In java + operator on strings works like this: Object a = null; String s = "foo bar " + a; // s == "foo bar null" So, it's possible to get "null" as a string downstream, when some variable that should be non-nulleable - was null. If you find such a bug and incompetently fix it by checking for "null" downstream instead of checking before turning variables into strings - you have the error from the article. Especially…

Sure – that's just casting a null type as a string. So I guess if you have a comparison that somehow casts null to a string before comparing, you could run into this issue, but that's still bad programming. I used to own null@myundergrad.edu as an email alias (with my real university, not that generic .edu, of course) and I got all sorts of interesting things... but that was very intentional on my part.

Funnily enough - it's not the null-> String conversion, it's the "+" operator. That was at one point subject of heated debate in my previous job :)

See:

     "null".equals((String)null)  //false
     "null".equals((String)null+"") //true
     System.out.print((String)null) // throws NPE
     System.out.println((String)null) // prints "null", I guess because it appends "\n" inside

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#56

Post by tyingq »

nteou987noeu wrote: post #54
justinv wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyphens too. Source: have a hyphenated last name. "No special characters in this field".

I get that with periods in a street name. Like when I write "123 Main St.", and the web site checks against the USPS's database, it will either reject it outright for having "special" characters, or will say, "We didn't find that, but we found this similar address - '123 Main St', which should we use?" It's so fucking dumb.

I sympathize, but it is a hard problem to solve. On the seller side, many orders come in with addresses that are just wrong, or missing suite numbers, business names, etc.

Ups and FedEx charge shippers ~$15 for each instance where they have to address correct.

So, yeah, the period thing is dumb, but automated correction is hard. Even experts, like SmartyStreets get it wrong often.

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#57

Post by jmcdiesel »

My old Manager's last name is Blank. The sad thing, given blank isnt a reserved word at all, is he has the same problem. I think its EventBright or Ticketmaster, i forget, but one of those sites wont accept "Blank" as his last name, literally with the message of "Last name can not be blank" ...

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#58

Post by joejerryronnie »

Reminds me of the time we ordered our high school football jerseys. We filled out a form listing the requested size and spelling of our last name to be printed on the back of our jersey. A couple of weeks later, all the jerseys were delivered and we excitedly opened up the packing boxes to hand them out. Imaging the surprise and ensuing hilarity when our good friend, Marshall Blank's jersey came out of the box with no name printed on it whatsoever.

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#59

Post by incongruity »

ajuc wrote: post #55
incongruity wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure – that's just casting a null type as a string. So I guess if you have a comparison that somehow casts null to a string before comparing, you could run into this issue, but that's still bad programming. I used to own null@myundergrad.edu as an email alias (with my real university, not that generic .edu, of course) and I got all sorts of interesting things... but that was very intentional on my part.

Funnily enough - it's not the null-> String conversion, it's the "+" operator. That was at one point subject of heated debate in my previous job :) See: "null".equals((String)null) //false "null".equals((String)null+"") //true System.out.print((String)null) // throws NPE System.out.println((String)null) // prints "null", I guess because it appends "\n" inside

Right, but that operator is implicitly casting the null object to a string type – it has to, in a strict sense... some other languages would raise an error (and many would do the same as Java).

Re: My last name makes me invisible to Computers (2015)

#60

Post by ajuc »

incongruity wrote: post #59
ajuc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough - it's not the null-> String conversion, it's the "+" operator. That was at one point subject of heated debate in my previous job :) See: "null".equals((String)null) //false "null".equals((String)null+"") //true System.out.print((String)null) // throws NPE System.out.println((String)null) // prints "null", I guess because it appends "\n" inside

Right, but that operator is implicitly casting the null object to a string type – it has to, in a strict sense... some other languages would raise an error (and many would do the same as Java).

It doesn't have to. null.toString() throws NPE as it should. I would expect "foo" + null to throw NPE as well.

BTW there's another "fun" gotcha, when you interface java code and oracle database which consider empty string and null to be the same thing. Depending on how you handle data from database you end up with null, "", or "null" :)

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