Re: A little afternoon WTF

From:
Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Thu, 13 May 2010 19:45:40 +0100
Message-ID:
<alpine.DEB.1.10.1005131943360.16381@urchin.earth.li>
On Thu, 13 May 2010, John B. Matthews wrote:

In article <alpine.DEB.1.10.1005131756360.31415@urchin.earth.li>,
Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> wrote:

For your edutainment, some code (lightly anonymised) seen while digging
into code written by some (now-departed) contractors today:

  private static String header = "" +
  "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\r\n" +
  "<initech:tps-report><initech:coversheet> etc";

WTF: the empty string literal on the first line. What did they think that
was for?


Preferring to break before an operator, I might write this for
readability:

   private static final String header = "" +
       + "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n"
       + "<initech:tps-report><initech:coversheet> etc";


You probably wouldn't, because that has two +s in a row after the empty
string. I assume you would lose the first one, leaving one at the start of
the line. Even with the insistence on operators at the start of the line
(which i do quite like myself), i'd prefer this:

     private static final String header
         = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n"
         + "<initech:tps-report><initech:coversheet> etc";

tom

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