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Google Code Search Reveals Dark Corners

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the oopsie dept.

saccade.com writes, "The new Google Code Search isn't just for hackers sniffing for passwords. Jason Kottke and friends have discovered the new feature reveals all sorts of dark corners hidden in our code. And you thought nobody ever read your comments!" From the article: "Code search is a great resource for web developers and programmers, but like the making available of all previously unsearched bodies of information, it's given lots of flashlights to people interested in exploring dark corners."

15 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. google seems to inspire... by Beuno · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google seems to inspire this kind of behaviour for some reason. The have been lots of websites like krugle who search a big db of code, and these things didn't come up until google launched this.

  2. Dark corners? by c0d3h4x0r · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Indeed!

    --
    Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
    1. Re:Dark corners? by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not suprising, about half the responces on the first page were about how bad IE (Internet Explorer) fucks things up!

      " but IE6's implementation fucks up the..."
      " // check for function objects (as usual, IE is fucked up)"

    2. Re:Dark corners? by TheViffer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Indeed, Indeed, Indeed

      Just better not SCO know about this ..

      --
      -- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
  3. Old-school by FlyByPC · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Zork nostalgia, anyone?

    --
    Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
  4. Ahh frustrated programmers by kypper · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why didn't I keep on programming?

  5. Fucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It also inspired Number of fucks per programming language and license.

  6. Re:For the record by BeeBeard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hehe...I read that and I was like "Who in the heck is Andy Church?" and "I've got to treat this guy to a pint!" You rock, Mr. Church.

  7. No fun! by Greyfox · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The vast majority of code along with wonderful comments is hidden behind corporate firewalls where the google search engine will never get at it. Which is probably just as well as I've no doubt that potential future employers would be searching that code if it were available and reading my sardonic comments about the drug habits of prior programmers, speculation as to the number of box tops they had to send in to obtain their degrees and gripes about how co-workers clearly did not read my warning about not changing function interfaces unless they really knew what they were doing, and they clearly did not know what they were doing as evidenced by the fact that they passed record counters as ints in one place and then used those ints as pointers in another place (And no, this was not some form of genius on their part, either.) Also: Run-on sentences.

    Instead potential employers (like me) can google your code and read those comments that you wrote in there. Don't worry though... I won't hold those against you.

    Anyway, "unless you really know what you're doing" and "smoking cracK" are also fun searchesa over there...

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  8. Favorite by springbox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is my favorite from the article: The phrase "should be big enough" should never be seen alongside statically allocated arrays.

  9. You are not expected... by slushdork · · Score: 4, Interesting
    My favorite: You are not expected to understand this

    See here for an explanation (from the horse's mouth, as it were...)

  10. memset( pointer, size, 0 ) - NO! by noidentity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have to say, the search for incorrect use of C's memset really cracked me up. One instance after another of code which doesn't do a thing!

  11. malloc(strlen(\w\)); by tore · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These could be of special interest malloc(strlen(\w+));
    and these new char[strlen(\w+)];

  12. Re:And the Ever Popular... by pchan- · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oh, we can do much better. Here are some favorites:

    "guy who wrote this" "in case some idiot" "ugly hack" "rewrite this later" "hail mary" "this shouldn't work" "compiler happy" "what the fuck" "blows goats"

    And I really love this one: i=i++

  13. Re:Wow. Just wow. by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is not sad, it's scary!

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.