gotcha
<jargon, programming> 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.
[Jargon File]
(1995-04-17)
Nearby terms:
GOSMACS « Gosperism « GOSPL « gotcha » goto »
Gottlob Frege » gov
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