in reply to Funniest Variable/Subroutine names

I ++'d this thread. Even though I don't make a practice of using non-meaningful names, I think it's hilarious to stumble across something like this when I'm supporting/maintaining code. The only reason I refrain is because my memory blows chunks. I need meaning ful names so, when I'm revisiting my code at a later date, my intentions are fairly apparent.

This thread does bring to mind a funny, but extremely off-topic, error message my team received from an OS core dump on an older VMS system some years ago. The error message was "Shut 'er down Clancy, she's pumping mud!" Oddly, this error message was undocumented. After a fairly lengthy conversation with one of the OS's authors, he stated that this error message should never be reached. For some reason, they had a conditional similar to the following: 

if true {
   ...do something;
} elsif false {
   ...do something else;
} else {
   print "Shut 'er down.....";
}

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And somehow, we managed to be neither true nor false.

If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.

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Re: (shockme) Re: Funniest Variable/Subroutine names
by lshatzer (Friar) on Apr 05, 2002 at 04:04 UTC
    Yes, I do agree meaningfull variable names are needed. I forgot to mention, all of these funny variable names were in throw away code, early in my perl career or as a joke for co-workers that was shortly changed.

    In regards to your VMS error, I have done something similar, without the humor though, put a debug message, even though in all accounts it should have never been executed. And of course, somehow my shebang was changed to #/usr/bin/murphy, or so I thought, and it was executed, fixed the code, after a few tests, and seeing the light. Good thing I put a message like "If you see this, something very wrong happened."

    Thanks for your response!
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Re: (shockme) Re: Funniest Variable/Subroutine names
by maverick (Curate) on Apr 05, 2002 at 14:54 UTC
    Someone actually told me the details of the 'Clancy' error message a few days ago...I'll try to remember them as best I can.

    The first appearance of this message was for a kernel panic on a Texas Instruments xxx100 (forgot the letters). TI was headquarted in Dallas, and the company got its start producing equipment for oil well drilling. Well, if you're drilling an oil well and hit water, then all you pump out of the ground is mud. The only thing you can do at that point is to tear down the drilling rig and move it somewhere else (time consuming and expensive).

    HTH

    /\/\averick
    OmG! They killed tilly! You *bleep*!!

[reply]
      Wow. I was working at Texas Instruments when this happened. It would've been in '86 or very early '87. Interesting. (As to breaking down and moving oil rigs, the expense involved is mind-boggling.)

      If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.

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Re: (shockme) Re: Funniest Variable/Subroutine names
by wolis (Scribe) on Nov 24, 2003 at 03:19 UTC
    I like to: 
    my @bits = split(/\|/,$string);
foreach my $bit(@bits){
  # work with each bit..
}

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    I also had some fuzzy logic in some code: setting a string flag to iether 'true', 'false' or the equally valid value 'maybe' 
     ___
/\__\ "What is the world coming to?"
\/__/ www.wolispace.com

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