Hard to find bug

[tibberous]

I just spent 20 minutes swearing at my computer. This is one of the most annoying and hard to find bugs ever:

 

function dateToSQL($m, $d, $y, $h=0, $m=0, $s=0){
	if($h || $m || $s) return "$y-$m-$d $h:$min:$s";
	else return "$y-$m-$d";
}

 

See the error? It's that $m for month and $m for minute are the same. Why doesn't PHP throw an error? I have no fucking idea, but it probably should, since it would make no sense to ever intentionally do this. Since the function is so simple, I just first thought it was a problem with the query after it, then with the code before it. Then I thought that 07 was somehow getting converted into the int 0 because of the leading 0....

 

Just one of those nights...

 

[trq]

Another reason to name your variables with a bit more meaning.

[tibberous]

I generally do, it's just that to me:

 

$y-$m-$d $h:$m:$s

 

Is more readable than:

 

$year-$month-$day $hours:$minutes:$seconds

 

The second one just looks like a long string, not a date format.

[Philip]

Take your pick, but the shorter the var name the more likely you're going to accidentally use a previous var.

 

$y-$mo-$d $h:$mi:$s
$year-$mon-$day $hour:$min:$sec
$year-$month-$day $hours:$minutes:$seconds

[zq29]

I generally always use single letter vars for parts of dates and times when the functionality is contained, but I use $i for minutes, in line with the usage in date().

[salathe]

Surely your code was issuing an E_NOTICE ("Undefined variable: $min ...") due to the use of the $min variable which had not been defined.  I'd say that would point out the "bug" pretty darned quickly.

[Daniel0]

See the error? It's that $m for month and $m for minute are the same. Why doesn't PHP throw an error? I have no fucking idea, but it probably should, since it would make no sense to ever intentionally do this.

 

http://bugs.php.net

[tibberous]

Surely your code was issuing an E_NOTICE ("Undefined variable: $min ...") due to the use of the $min variable which had not been defined.  I'd say that would point out the "bug" pretty darned quickly.

 

It was return "$y-$m-$d $h:$m:$s"; originally - I fixed it, then changed it back to post it, but I didn't change $min back to $m.

[salathe]

Ahh, now that makes sense.  Do you feel that the behaviour (not giving any warnings or notices) is a bug in PHP, if so then feel free to file a report at the link that Daniel posted.