<<
i>jargon, programming
i>> A
misfeature of a system, especially a
programming language or environment, that tends to breed
bugs or mistakes because it both enticingly easy to invoke
and completely unexpected and/or unreasonable in its outcome.
For example, a classic
gotcha in
C is the fact that
if (a=b)
code;
is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts
the value of "b" into "a" and then executes "code" if "a" is
non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was
if (a==b)
code;
which executes "code" if "a" and "b" are equal.
[
Jargon File]
(1995-04-17)