A Software Development Tip – !!!

When developing code it is a frequent occurance that you write something as a quick “get it to compile” fix whilst your mind is focused on the key part on which you are working.

Let me offer an example. Whilst developing a TCP/IP interface to a set of remote digital and analogue i/o you come across a need for a function to extract a set of characters that are specific within a string. You might quickly write a function with a prototype:

String ExtractSpecificCharactersFromString(String IncomingString);

 In order to keep going on the main code you are writing on you may quickly write a dummy function body:

 String ExtractSpecificCharactersFromString(String IncomingString)
{
  return String(“D0=0xf5c9”);
}

 This allows your code to compile and it retuns a sample data String that allows you to start testing your code, all of which is good!

 But there is a real danger that “dummy” code like this can get left in genuine code for too long. You end up creating your own bug: “I am sure that digital output byte is set to 0xf500, so why does it keep reading as “0xf5c9?”

 Having wasted time as a younger programmer chasing these self inflicted bugs I have adopted a procedure where I reserve a comment statement with three consecutive ’!’ characters specifically for tagging code that is still to be written. For the above example create the function body as:

 String ExtractSpecificCharactersFromString(String IncomingString)
{
  return String(“D0=0xf5c9”); // !!! still to be written
}

 Then at regular “low concentration” moments you can go back to the code and search for the character string ”!!!! in “all project files” (using the Embarcadero C++ search terminology here) and quickly find all examples of dummy code where you know further work is required.

 I chose ”!!!” for this task as it is a string which is exceedingly unlikely to appear in genuine C++ code. Choose something else if you like but whatever you choose stick with it!