Four Island

Wow. I love The Daily WTF, and looking back at some of my code, I've written some WOEs myself. (WOE = What On Earth). So, I'd like to share them. Because they're funny. Yes.

for (i=0;i<toParse.length();i++)
{
  if ((toParse.substr(i, 1) != " ") && (toParse.substr(i, 1) != "4") && (toParse.substr(i, 1) != "\n"))
  {
    cout << endl << endl << "ERROR: Unrecognized character in line " << lineNum << ":" << endl;
    cout << "\t" << curline;
    endProgram();
  }
}
int j = 0;
i = 0;
if (toParse.length() > 0)
{
  while (toParse.length() != 0)
  {
    if ((toParse.substr(i, 1) == " ") || (toParse.substr(i, 1) == "\n"))
    {
      if (i == 0)
      {
        toParse = toParse.substr(1);
        i = -1;
      } else {
        string2int((char*)toParse.substr(0, i).c_str(),paras[j]);
        j++;
        toParse = toParse.substr(i + 1);
        i = -1;
      }
    }
    i++;
  }

If you haven't gotten it yet, here's the explanation. The program first verifies that the string toParse does not contain any non-4s, non-dashes and non-spaces. Then it examines each character and if it is not a dash or a space, it converts the character from an integer to a string. This is absolutely ridiculous as the only value that character could be at that point would be a 4.

This WOE has been taken from lines 43-72 of singlefour.cpp of the singlefour project. This code was introduced in revision 7 and fixed in revision 26.