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<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.
(1995-04-17)
Nearby terms: GOSMACS « Gosperism « GOSPL « gotcha » goto » Gottlob Frege » gov
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