The Daily WTF

Mark was debugging some database querying code, and got a bit confused about what it was actually doing. Specifically, it generated a query block like this:

$statement=”declare @status int declare @msg varchar(30) exec @status=sp_doSomething ‘arg1’, … select @msg=convert(varchar(10),@status) print @msg “; $result = sybase_query ($statement, $this->connection);

Run a stored procedure, capture its return value in a variable, stringify that variable and print it. The select/print must be for debugging, right? Leftover debugging code. Why else would you do something like that?

if (sybase_get_last_message()!==’0′) { … }

Oh no. sybase_get_last_message gets the last string printed out by a print statement. This is a pretty bonkers way to get the results of a function or procedure call back, especially when if there are any results (like a return value), they’ll be in the $result return value.

Now that said, reading through those functions, it’s a little unclear if you can

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