Re: marking mystery code

)Gary says
)"Incidentally, I saw similar comments and code obfuscations when
)maintaining Fortran IV code 20 years ago. It is depressing that the
)FSF sponsored code products haven't been designed, implemented, and
)maintained at a higher level of professionalism than what was common
)in 1976."


Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
)Gary, are you speaking from personal experiences with the FSF sources,
)which many people have found easy to work with, or are you borrowing
)second or third hand comments without this personal experience?


I can speak from personal experience working with the FSF code. It is
generally bloated, difficult (read: impossible) to read, uncommented,
and much of it is totally unmaintainable.


We found a defect in grep. We tracked it down to a subroutine. The
subroutine was hundreds of lines long, completely uncommented, and had
nesting levels of ifs and switches to 8 or 9 deep. Furthermore, it had
gotos from such deeply nested stuff to similarly deeply nested stuff
several tens of lines away. I ran a McCabe extended complexity measure
on it, and it was over 2000 (10-20 is considered the absolute maximum
for reliable code). Do I need to state that we did not repair the
problem? We used a different grep. I -use- a different grep. The FSF
grep cannot work, and cannot be made to work.


Mike
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.