{"id":5933,"date":"2012-12-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2012\/12\/03\/have-you-found-any-thedailywtf-worthy-code-during-the-development-of-windows-95\/"},"modified":"2012-12-03T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T07:00:00","slug":"have-you-found-any-thedailywtf-worthy-code-during-the-development-of-windows-95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20121203-00\/?p=5933","title":{"rendered":"Have you found any TheDailyWTF-worthy code during the development of Windows 95?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nMott555 is interested in some\n\nsloppy\/ugly code or strange workarounds or code comments\nduring the development of Windows 95<\/a>,\nlike “anything TheDailyWTF<\/a>-worthy.”\n<\/p>\n

\nI discovered that opening a particular program churned\nthe hard drive a lot when you opened it.\nI decided to hook up the debugger to see what the problem was.\nWhat I discovered was code that went roughly like this,\nin pseudo-code:\n<\/p>\n

\nint TryToCallFunctionX(a, b, c)\n{\n  for each file in (SystemDirectory,\n                    WindowsDirectory,\n                    ProgramFilesDirectory(RecursiveSearch),\n                    KitchenSink,\n                    Uncle.GetKitchenSink)\n  {\n    hInstance = LoadLibrary(file);\n    fn = GetProcAddress(hInstance, \"FunctionX\");\n    if (fn != nullptr) {\n        int result = fn(a,b,c);\n        FreeLibrary(hInstance);\n        return result;\n    }\n    fn = GetProcAddress(hInstance, \"__imp__FunctionX\");\n    if (fn != nullptr) {\n        int result = fn(a,b,c);\n        FreeLibrary(hInstance);\n        return result;\n    }\n    fn = GetProcAddress(hInstance, \"FunctionX@12\");\n    if (fn != nullptr) {\n        int result = fn(a,b,c);\n        FreeLibrary(hInstance);\n        return result;\n    }\n    fn = GetProcAddress(hInstance, \"__imp__FunctionX@12\");\n    if (fn != nullptr) {\n        int result = fn(a,b,c);\n        FreeLibrary(hInstance);\n        return result;\n    }\n    FreeLibrary(hInstance);\n  }\n  return 0;\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\nThe code enumerated every file in the system directory,\nWindows directory,\nProgram Files directory,\nand possibly also the kitchen sink\nand their uncle’s kitchen sink.\nIt tries to load each one as a library,\nand sees if it has an export called\nFunctionX<\/code>.\nFor good measure, it also tries\n__imp__­FunctionX<\/code>,\nFunctionX@12<\/code>, and\n__imp__­FunctionX@12<\/code>.\nIf it finds any match, it calls the function.\n<\/p>\n
\nAs it happens, every single call to\nGet­Proc­Address<\/code> failed.\nThe function they were trying to call was an internal\nfunction in the window manager that wasn’t exported.\nI guess they figured,\n“Hm, I can’t find it in user32<\/code>.\nMaybe it moved to some other DLL,”\nand went through every DLL they could think of.\n<\/p>\n
\nI called out this rather dubious programming technique,\nand word got back to the development team for that program.\nThey came back and admitted,\n“Yeah, we were hoping to call that function,\nbut couldn’t find it,\nand the code you found is stuff we added during debugging.\nWe have no intention of actually shipping that code.”\n<\/p>\n
\nWell, yeah, but still, what possesses you to try such a crazy technique,\neven if only for debugging?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mott555 is interested in some sloppy\/ugly code or strange workarounds or code comments during the development of Windows 95, like “anything TheDailyWTF-worthy.” I discovered that opening a particular program churned the hard drive a lot when you opened it. I decided to hook up the debugger to see what the problem was. What I discovered was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-5933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Mott555 is interested in some sloppy\/ugly code or strange workarounds or code comments during the development of Windows 95, like “anything TheDailyWTF-worthy.” I discovered that opening a particular program churned the hard drive a lot when you opened it. I decided to hook up the debugger to see what the problem was. What I discovered was […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}