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POWhat do you think when a Boolean "if" has three resulting code paths?
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  1. POWhat do you think when a Boolean "if" has three resulting code paths?
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    copied!<p>(Background: from a previous job, a co-worker and I would end up discussing the bug pile during lunch. We began to develop a topic called "bug of the week". I doubt I have material for 52 posts a year, but here's the first one...)</p> <p>Reported by:</p> <p>QA tester was reading HTML/JS code to write a functional test of a web form, and saw:</p> <pre><code>if (form_field == empty) { ...do stuff for empty field } else if (form_field != empty) { ...do stuff for non-empty field } else { ...do stuff that will never be done } </code></pre> <p>After a couple embarassing attempts, tester realized that they couldn't trigger the alert strings hidden in the third block.</p> <p>Things I'm wondering are:</p> <ul> <li>Is this problem more or less language specific (can non-JS people learn lessons here?)</li> <li>Are there legitimate reasons code ended up this way?</li> <li>What approaches should be used to find/address the problem (code coverage, code review, blackbox testing, etc.)</li> </ul> <p>A couple other points:</p> <ol> <li><p>I'm hoping we can keep it positive. Imagine this is a person you work with (in a company that does not encourage flaming). Whatever mean things you might think of the guilty party, I probably already thought them too.</p></li> <li><p>I'm not a coder by profession. I checked the wiki box, in case someone wants to provide a more literal example, or add to the base of the thread.</p></li> </ol> <p>[EDIT] Similar to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/114342/what-are-code-smells-what-is-the-best-way-to-correct-them">https://stackoverflow.com/questions/114342/what-are-code-smells-what-is-the-best-way-to-correct-them</a></p>
 

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