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that code sure is a pain in a neck 
What???
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"Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * " - The best maintenance ever 
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I think you shouldn't change this code...
You could angry the titans and centaurs who can ignite some gas using an electric cable. You will end up with a label with a printed "ownd by Therman, the undead coder".
I warned you, mortal.
Greetings - Jacek
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At least it works. I once had to rewrite an entire module because it contained more nesting than the Microsoft C 5.1 compiler could handle.
Hooray for greenbar tractor feed paper and multiple colored pens.
Oh yeah, that code had Goto's in it. Not only the normal backwards ones, but forward ones too. 
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Dim strBrowser As String = Request.Browser.Browser.ToString()
Dim strBroswerVersion As String = Request.Browser.Version.ToString()
If strBrowser.ToString() = "IE" Then
If IsNumeric(strBroswerVersion.ToString()) Then
If strBroswerVersion < 9 Then
End If
End If
End If
While fixing compiler errors after enabling option strict, I have come across a prodigious level of crap. I can't post it all, but this one stood out for being crap on almost every level imaginable. Here are a few notes off the top of my head:
- Generally, you should avoid checking browser versions, especially in server-side code (I believe the reasoning is that older browsers are slower, so some value was changed).
- Compilation breaks when trying to compare a string against a number.
- Anything this would have done has been commented out, so it does nothing.
- Calling ToString on a string (which I think might even throw a null reference exception if the original string is null)... four times.
- Comparing strings without ignoring case.
- The commented out code (not shown) would have caused a compiler error too (attempt to divide a string by a number).
- Hungarian notation.
Can I cry yet? 
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And to top it all off, someone wrote it in VB! 
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AspDotNetDev wrote: If strBroswerVersion < 9 Then
Man i cant imagine anything which has to be done in order to see something working as it should be on IE 
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You should see some of the crap *wonderful* third-party VB code I've been asked to help with!
Here's a typical example:
Public Shared Function GetBitNr(ByVal TestInteger As Integer, ByVal Nr As Integer) As Integer
If TestInteger < 0 Then
If Nr = 32 Then
Return 1
End If
TestInteger = TestInteger + CInt(&H80000000)
End If
Dim i As Long = 30
Dim str As String = ""
Do While (i > -1)
If 2 ^ i <= TestInteger Then
str = str & "1"
TestInteger = CInt(Math.Round(TestInteger - 2 ^ i))
ElseIf Left(str, 1) = "1" Then
str = str & "0"
End If
i = i - 1
Loop
Dim result As Integer
If Len(str) >= Nr Then
result = CInt(Mid(str, Len(str) - Nr + 1, 1))
Else
result = 0
End If
Return CInt(result)
End Function
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Richard Deeming wrote: CInt(&H80000000)
Probably i should not ask but from pure curiosity: What is this ?
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&H is VB prefix for Hex constant: so &H100 is 256, &H200 is 512, and so forth.
So it's converting a 32 bit hexadecimal integer constant value to a 32 bit integer value... 
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)
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But if this is a signed integer, wouldn't it just add -1 to the input instead of turning the sign around? Or is Cint() a conversion to unsigned int?
Also converting the whole number when you only need one bit, thats "just great". 
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Well - no. What it will do is throw an OverflowException "Value was either too large or too small for an Int32." when you try to do the convert in the C# version, or "Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow." when you add the two together in the VB...
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)
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Not to mention converting the string manually instead of using Convert.ToString(TestInteger, 2)[^].
Or concatenating up to 31 strings during the conversion.
Or extracting a single character as a string instead of a character.
Or using CInt when you know it will be either "0" or "1".
Or even the fact that the whole method could be replaced with:
Return If(TestInteger And (2 ^ (Nr - 1)) = 0, 0, 1)
And as for the fact that the function was only ever called with a single value of Nr, so that all the calls could be replaced with:
If (someValue And 64) <> 0 Then
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Now I see the point of lessons on Assembler... One of the first tasks was to "convert a decimal number to a binary representation and output to the console". If you have to write something in ASM, you desperately look for a smallest an easiest solution possible. Everybody should have such lessons. It teaches how the computer arithmetic works better than a houndred of calculus lectures.
Greetings - Jacek
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Hehe finally i made my way to The Weird and The Wonderful. Enjoy!
I am sitting here writing some vc++ code cloning some Dom nodes with MSXML and cloneNode(VARIANT_BOOL deep) and i noticed that the deep cloning isn't working. After some googling i found this gem
typedef short VARIANT_BOOL;
#define VARIANT_TRUE ((VARIANT_BOOL)-1)
#define VARIANT_FALSE ((VARIANT_BOOL)0)
with this explanation "This was developed by the Visual Basic folks" Clickety
Microsoft... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true
Thank you Visual Basic Team.
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Welcome to W & W 
http://authenticcode.com
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This isn't a Microsoft thing. BASIC is the issue. non-zero = TRUE.
But it's still idiotic, and yet another reason to avoid lecacy crap such as BASIC.
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I think this is a legacy from the pre-BASIC days of writing everything in assembler or direct hex (or octal) code. The value of -1 for a byte of 8 bits was 1111 1111 which also means true (all bits set to 1). This seems to have percolated into VB. I agree that it doesn't seem logical these days but way back then there was no strong typing and bool didn't really exist.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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I suspect you maybe right. something *convenient* and to do with cpu condition flags.
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Yes, that always used to catch me out with VBA.
The worst part was that a check box had three states - true, false and indeterminate.
Guess what the indeterminate state was? Yes it was 1!
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
modified 26-Jun-13 10:24am.
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What means a check box to the indeterminate?! Does it randomly mark it or not ? Or maybe just check it in half 
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A checkbox could be checked, not checked or have a light grey fill - the light grey fill meant indeterminate.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I think it's the check box that is filled in with a square. Like when you have an installer and there's a tree of options, and the root option has a check box that checks or unchecks all of the sub-options, and it turns to a square if you only check at least one but not all sub-options.
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Indeterminate shows if there are sub-checkboxes belonging to this one, some of them can be checked, some unchecked. So the parent checkbox can't be 'checked' or 'unchecked' but partially-checked. 
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