Hello,
This is Gerald F6HBI. Few days ago, i wanted to update the summit list for my well loved soft “Saisie Sota”; I could not because of an error in the dowloaded file: summitlist.csv.
I did edit the file, then made a trick! and the update worked fine.
Today on my Android, i tryed to update the summit list for “Sota Spotter” app.
Same problem…
The error is a quote caracter (") that should be at the end of the line W6/SC-368 after “N6KM
This caracter (”) is starting a new line just after.
That’s probably the issue?
Anybody can help?
Gerald F6HBI
There were some newlines embedded in the callsign that was entered. It’s fixed now but you will have to wait till summitlist.csv is generated again which is once every 24hrs. Should be fine for you tomorrow.
I read a book on programming once which said that, when your users enter strings of characters, you can either have your program remove unwanted white space (spaces, tabs, newlines) at the time of writing it to a database table, or have it remove them when using the entered text to create, say, an export file.
Pffft! - what does the author know about real-time applications?
Of course, if you are properly processing CSV files, then newlines within quotes should be handled correctly, but
Now, I also read a book once that said software is full of bugs. Either bugs you know about and will fix in time, or bugs you don’t know about yet. There is no bug free code.
Now in this instance, the callsign comes across from SSO, which treats the callsign as a free text attribute, and has no ability to trim whitespace from the input (because it simply doesn’t know whether it should or shouldn’t). This means it appears everywhere - in access tokens, whenever an API call is made and the bearer is converted into user details, so it’s pervasive and easy to slip by somewhere.
I count about 200 instances where the callsign is trimmed by the API, but this is one that was missed. Bug fixed. One less, who knows how many more are left.
I read somewhere a definition of production software. It is software from which “some of the bugs have been removed”.
Rather tellingly, this was coined in the 80s or so, but still applies now… APIs and Web 2.0/3.0/4.0 will not remove this human fallibility. We just have to deal with it and move on.
Overall the SOTA suite is really good quality and offers the maximum value for money.
And when the final program’s run and all its data saved They’ll take the last dead programmer and lay him in his grave And the very last bug left in sight, a cockroach passing by Will walk across his coffin there, as if to say, "Nice try.‘’
