536

Meme transcription:

Panel 1: Bilbo Baggins ponders, “After all… why should I care about the difference between int and String?

Panel 2: Bilbo Baggins is revealed to be an API developer. He continues, “JSON is always String, anyways…”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago

I’m not sure if you’re getting it, so I’ll explain just in case.

In computer science a few conventions have emerged on how numbers should be interpreted, depending on how they start:

  • decimal (the usual system with digits from 0 to 9): no prefix
  • binary (digits 0 and 1): prefix 0b, so 0b1001110
  • octal (digits 0 through 7): prefix 0, so 0116
  • hexadecimal (digits 0 through 9 and then A through E): prefix 0x, so 0x8E

If your zip code starts with 9, it won’t be interpreted as octal. You’re fine.

[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Well, you're right. I wasn't getting it, but I've also never seen any piece of software that would treat a single leading zero as octal. That's just a recipe for disaster, and it should use 0o116 to be unambiguous

(I am a software engineer, but was assuming you meant it was hardcoded to parse as octal, not some weird auto-detect)

[-] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 days ago

I’ve also never seen any piece of software that would treat a single leading zero as octal

I thought JavaScript did that, but it turns out it doesn’t. I thought Java did that, but it turns out it doesn’t. Python did it until version 2.7: https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/functions.html#int. C still does it: https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/string/byte/strtol

[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Interesting that strtol in C does that. I've always explicitly passed in base 10 or 16, but I didn't know it would auto-detect if you passed 0. TIL.

[-] docAvid@midwest.social 1 points 3 days ago

It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure C treats a leading zero as octal in source code. PHP and Node definitely do. Yes, it's a bad convention. It's much worse if that's being done by a runtime function that parses user input, though. I'm pretty sure I've seen that somewhere in the past, but no idea where. Doesn't seem likely to be common.

[-] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 days ago

PHP and Node definitely do.

Node doesn’t.

> parseInt('077')
77
  1. If the input string, with leading whitespace and possible +/- signs removed, begins with 0x or 0X (a zero, followed by lowercase or uppercase X), radix is assumed to be 16 and the rest of the string is parsed as a hexadecimal number.
  2. If the input string begins with any other value, the radix is 10 (decimal).

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt

[-] docAvid@midwest.social 1 points 3 days ago

You seem to have missed the important phrase "in source code", as well as the entire second part of my comment discussing that runtime functions that parse user input are different.

this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
536 points (98.0% liked)

Programmer Humor

18253 readers
1 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS