The Trials, Tribulations, and Party Anecdotes Of “Edge Case” Names
May 16, 2016
The article titled These Unlucky People Have Names That Break Computers on BBC Future delves into the strange world of “edge cases” or people with unexpected or problematic names that reveal glitches in the most commonplace systems that those of us named “Smith” or “Jones” take for granted. Consider Jennifer Null, the Virginia woman who can’t book a plane ticket or complete her taxes without extensive phone calls and headaches. The article says,
“But to any programmer, it’s painfully easy to see why “Null” could cause problems for a database. This is because the word “null” is often inserted into database fields to indicate that there is no data there. Now and again, system administrators have to try and fix the problem for people who are actually named “Null” – but the issue is rare and sometimes surprisingly difficult to solve.”
It may be tricky to find people with names like Null. Because of the nature of the controls related to names, issues generally arise for people like Null on systems where it actually does matter, like government forms. This is not an issue unique to the US, either. One Patrick McKenzie, an American programmer living in Japan, has run into regular difficulties because of the length of his last name. But that is nothing compared to Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe’ekahaunaele, a Hawaiian woman who championed for more flexibility in name length restrictions for state ID cards.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 16, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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