RE: Move 'ABC' to Numeric?

["John Brandt Sr." <pgmr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ok,
Hopefully to put this to rest, the vendor did it. I've seen it in as many as
7 or 8 JDE installations and various programs over the years. It is, as they
say, "a salt line". Put there by the vendor to be able to spot
code-stealing. It's a wonder that code that bad (in places) has to salt the
code. I know I would never steal something that well written <eg>
John Brandt
iStudio400.com

-----Original Message-----
From: rob@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:rob@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 9:10 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: Move 'ABC' to Numeric?


Steve,

I don't think Tom was saying it was CASE, or any other tool dependent.  I 
think he was saying that no sober person would put that line in their 
program on their own.  Therefore if a vendor see's a program in another 
vendor's package with that line then it is pretty obvious that the other 
package stole the logic from you.

Rob Berendt
-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
Benjamin Franklin 





"Steve Landess" <steve_landess@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
07/26/2003 08:39 AM
Please respond to RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
 
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        Subject:        Re: Move 'ABC' to Numeric?


>>Bill wrote:
>>  2. Move 'ABC' to Numeric?  (Bill Hopkins)
>>Anyone know why you would see this in code.
>>        MOVE 'ABC'       NUM            8P0
 >>More code follows; then
>>NUM     IFEQ     123
>>More code
>>        ENDIF
>>
>>Found in bridge from JDE Sales Orders to PKMS

>
> Tom wrote:
> Does anything happen if it's not equal? Or is there an implication that
something somewhere else won't >happen if the IF-test fails because the
enclosed statements didn't run?
>
> I can _imagine_ someone from years gone by using something like this as 
a
part of code that was
> generated so that under different circumstance a different source line
would have been auto-gen'd
>into the code to result in a value other than 123, perhaps because the
referenced numeric field might
> sometimes be signed and otherwise unsigned.
>
> Or perhaps the 'ABC' constant would be used as a marker in the compiled
object in order
>to recognize a reverse-engineered kind of rip-off? A few of these 
sprinkled
around weren't
>unheard of and I believe still are used. It might just be a remnant that
never got cleaned up.

Tom -

IMO, This was not code generated by the JDE CASE tool.  I have been 
working
with JDE software since 1987, and I have never seen anything like this in
any JDE program.  Some human bozo coded it.  I have seen many modified JDE
programs that had stupid modifications like this.

Once, when I was working at a client in the Dallas area, a JDE _employee_
came in to fix a problem with the invoice print program.  Later, when the
program was still working incorrectly, I looked at the mods he made. 
Instead
of fixing the real problem, he had coded a GOTO around a block of code so
that the program would not bomb.

This speaks to the need of having a systematic way of QA'ing programs.  In
college I was taught the structured methodology and using peer reviews, 
the
"ego-less" approach to reviewing code.  Too often the mavericks slip 
things
in the code that should be caught _before_ the program gets into 
production.

Steve
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