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Code Smell 57 - Versioned Functions

Maxi Contieri on January 20, 2021

sort, sortOld, sort20210117, workingSort, It is great to have them all. Just in case Problems Readability Maintainability S...
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Junxiao Shi •

What if:

  • It's a C function, where optional arguments are not supported.
  • A new version of the function adds an extra argument.
  • Old version cannot be deleted because it would break dependants.

The only way is to keep both old and new functions.

Real example: pipe and pipe2 in Linux syscall

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Maxi Contieri •

Many bad languages introduce unavoidable code smells

We should be aware of them

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Michiel Hendriks •

That doesn't change the fact that it is a code smell. Sometimes language or runtime restrictions make code smells unavoidable.