Web anvari.org
Anvari.Org
» Anvari.Org

gotcha n. A misfeature of a system, especially a programming language or environment

gotcha n.

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.

Related:




Retrieved from http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Jargon_File/12502_gotcha-n-a-misfeature-of-a-system-especially-a-programming-language-or-environment.html