Google Docs crashed when fed 'And. And. And. And. And.'

Google Docs, the search giant's web-based word processing app, has been resuscitated after it was found choking on a series of conjunctions and other parts of speech. Web developer Pat Needham noticed that typing, "And. And. And. And. And." into Google Docs, capitalized thus but without the quotation marks, caused the …

[Ken Moorhouse]

I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

But not with the upper case or punctuation.

Mr Jones of the company Jones and Sons was taking the signwriter to task over the amount of space he had left between Jones and and and and and Sons.

I am sure others here can beat that. Have one of these ---->

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

Deploying your demonstratively constructive destructive sentence constructive methodology one should be able to come up with a suitably destructive construction without resorting to a contortive ... ... err you get the idea.

You could simply go the quine route (self referential) or deploy a sentence about capitalization and then take it to a properly ludicrous conclusion.

Don't blame me when either The Old Ones materialize and the end of the world kicks off (again) or an elderly dog materializes and widdles on your foot.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

I'll 'and it to you.

[Paul Herber]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

We've had Partygate, and another Partygate, now it's time for Andgate. Or Not.

JK Flipflop (Mrs)

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: now it's time for Andgate

Just don't try optimising a 5 bar gate. It will fall apart.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: now it's time for Andgate

My grandmother and grandfather were once chased across a field by a horse. Prior to this incident she had no idea that she could vault a five bar gate.

[Arthur the cat]

Re: now it's time for Andgate

A friend of mine found she could run backwards up a termite mound twice her height, that she didn't even know was there, when charged by a bad tempered elephant(*).

(*) I think it was an elephant. Could have been a rhino in which case the "bad tempered" is redundant.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: now it's time for Andgate

Arthur the cat: "I think it was an elephant. Could have been a rhino in which case the "bad tempered" is redundant."

Rhino's are sweet and nice, and only really interested in eating grass. I met one once in a reserve in Tanzania (or Kenya, I forget which). I fed it some grass. It had two armed guards, not to protect the tourists but to protect it from poachers. Of course this was a tame one, wild ones could be absolutely livid:

https://www.facebook.com/BritishComedyGuide/videos/not-the-nine-oclock-news-gerald/767252717054388/

[Ace2]

Re: now it's time for Andgate

I love the sobriquet “battle unicorn”

[Mage]

Re: rhino in which case the "bad tempered" is redundant.

You mean Hippo.

Despite being vegetarians they bite crocs in half for fun and any small yappy dog is doomed to be a snack.

Crocs jump out of a river at prey. When they discover it's a young hippo with its mum it's too late.

[SundogUK]

Re: rhino in which case the "bad tempered" is redundant.

I grew up in Africa and where we were, hippo's were the number one killer. (After the mosquito, obviously.)

[Potty Professor]

Re: now it's time for Andgate

I have only once ever seen someone do a "Cat Jump" from a standing start and end up standing on the seat of a settee.

My wife and I came into our house, and our dog seemed very interested in the small gap under the settee in the lounge. My wife was standing at the end of the settee, when a mouse came rushing out from under the settee and dashed across the carpet, closely followed by the dog. It ended up under the television stand, with the dog's nose jammed into the tiny gap. In the meantime, SWMBO had levitated straight up, over the arm of the settee, and was standing on the seat, making little squeaking noises. I am afraid that I blotted my copybook by doubling up with laughter, which was not well received.

I helped her down from her perch, and hauled the dog out from under the telly. A mousetrap was hastily set in front of the telly stand, and the room closed off. A few seconds later, I heard the "Snap" of the trap being set off, upon which I disposed of the tiny carcass.

The atmosphere in the house was distinctly frosty for several hours thereafter.

[John Robson]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

I like the repetition of had - less sleek, but rather mind bending.

In the grammar test James, whilst John had had "had", had had "had had", "had had" had had a better result on the teacher.

[ColinPa]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

I liked the version which mis quoted this.

In the grammar test James, while John had X had had Y, Y had a better result on the teacher.

Now replace X with <had had "had", had had "had had", "had had" had had >

and Y with <had had "had had", had had "had", "had had" had had>

You now get about 30 had's in a row.

It's turtles all the way down.

[Arthur the cat]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

(Buffalo)ⁿ.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: shī shì shí shī shǐ

The Chinese have similar in Pinyin and pronunciation. Ok the tones and Mandarin characters are distinct.

https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php

[Arthur the cat]

Re: shī shì shí shī shǐ

I've heard that spoken by a native speaker. I could hear some differences, but couldn't say what they were and probably missed 75%.

[jmch]

Re: shī shì shí shī shǐ

Young children who haven't mentally categorised sounds into phonemes yet can pick up on all the subtle differences in pronunciation. If living in an environment where there is a clear difference in meaning between the subtle audio differences, the different sounds are categorised differently in the internal brain mapping.

This mental plasticity is lost as humans grow older, after which the phoneme categories are fixed. So if I grew up in a western world wit say 4 different pronunciations of the letter a, those are the ones I can recognise. If Chinese has 8 different pronunciations, I can only put each of those pronunciations into one of my 4 'buckets' and there is no way* I can ever tell apart 2 different sounds that I have learned to fit into 1 bucket at a young age.

*or, possibly, would require years of practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

That caused me to crash.

[call-me-mark]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

I think you need to put some speech marks in there so that we can tell the difference between "and" and "and" and "and" and "and" and "and".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

"And then?"

(Sorry, mildly amusing scene, but based on some borderline dubious racial stereotyping of the little old ladies who (often) work in Chinese takeaways; I'd hope Hollywood would be a bit more circumspect nowadays, there's a fine line between good natured teasing each other (eg, Groundskeeper Willie), and going too far.)

[VTAMguy]

Absurd

It's so absurd that this is even a thing at all. When I'm typing words into a computer I want the word processor or editor to accept my words and write them to a file. That's it. I don't want suggestions about anything at all ever, whether derived from faulty AI or faulty JavaScript. All those bazillion Google 'programmers' could be doing something actually useful instead of this kind of change for changes sake crap. Leave it alone. All you ever do is make it worse, and more confusing.

[captain veg]

Re: Absurd

Yes.

A word processor has at least a pretext for trying to identify words. A text editor, none at all.

Google Docs is, I guess, functioning as a word processor in the scenario quoted. Trying too hard, I would say. If your word processor can't identify actual words then it's time to give up.

-A.

[veti]

Re: Absurd

Of course Google Docs is a word processor, what kind of question is that anyway?

And I often ask Notepad++ to identify words, whenever I'm working on code. Don't you use something similar?

[captain veg]

Re: Absurd

> f course Google Docs is a word processor

The OP mentioned both word processors and editors.

> Don't you use something similar?

Not really. Coding isn't the same as creative writing. Sure, it's great if a code editor can find the boundaries between identifiers, but that's not really the same thing, and it's highly language-specific.

-A.

[John Robson]

Re: Absurd

Highly language specific, and since code *must* be machine readable (and very strongly should be human readable, but that's a secondary consideration) having a system which highlights syntax to aid with the secondary aim, whilst also supporting the primary aim is a good thing.

Can I code in vi*? Yes

Do I code in vi more than anything else? Probably because I am mostly hacking about stuff to stop a specific breakage, and mostly in python, over ssh, in ~minimal containers.

Does that mean that vi is the best tool for the job? In the sense that it is basically always available - yes, in the sense that other tools have assistive features I'd benefit from - absolutely not.

* Other editors are available.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Absurd

you only need ED.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: you only need ED.

Isn't that a limp choice?

[veti]

Re: Absurd

Then turn off grammar checking, and you'll never have to see it.

You're welcome.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Absurd

This seems to be even worse according to TFA. It's some sort of predictive text mechanism.

[veti]

Re: Absurd

TFA says that it happens when "Show grammar suggestions" is selected, and you refresh the page. Suggesting that the refresh process is the trigger for the grammar proc to run. Sounds reasonable to me.

[Norman Nescio]

Re: Absurd

Then turn off grammar checking, and you'll never have to see it.

You're welcome.

Shirley that should of been: "Your welcome?".

[jmch]

Re: Absurd

There are many use cases where it is desirable, and definitely useful for many end users.

Not everyone has prefect spelling and grammar, many people are writing documents in a second (or indeed nth) language, so spelling and grammar checks are useful to have. They are simply tools. If they don't work for you turn them off.

Of course they're not always perfect, I've frequently seen perfectly cromulent words and sentences marked as wrong.

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Absurd

My first thought was "Why are Google specifically recruiting Brazilian programmers?"!

Then my brain caught up with my eyes!

[TheDrift]

Its making a comeback!

Bush hid the facts

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

"Smart" = stupid + stupid + stupid + ...

Reminds me of the signwriter in the Victorian town of Yackandandah.

He left too much space between Yack and and and and and and and and and ah.

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

Why isn't the grammar checker not in a thread?

[bazza]

Er, Javascript does threads?

This kind of fault is caused by not dealing with error conditions thrown or returned by code. Someone somewhere assumed "That error will never occur". So, where else have they screwed up in a similar manner?

[Filippo]

> Er, Javascript does threads?

It has web workers. They are not exactly like threads, but you definitely could run a grammar checker in a web worker.

I assume that, just like the endless cases where a program freezes for a few seconds when you click on something, this is something that could be done in a background thread, but is actually done in the main thread, just because it's a lot easier to code that way, and we have a crapload of other features to do, and it's such a short time that the user won't notice it anyway, and, and, and...

[Warm Braw]

With the caveat that this is simple (perhaps futile) speculation, I'd hazard that two separate things are going on.

Before you even attempt to do the grammar checking, you need to locate the chunk of text you're wanting to check: there's not much point doing it immediately every character is typed, nor constantly re-checking text that's already been examined and hasn't changed. I'd guess that there is something running on the foreground thread attempting to isolate new or revised individual phrases, based on capitalisation and punctuation, which can then be further checked for grammatical correctness.

You could certainly delegate the grammar checking to a web worker once you have the phrase: since the web worker has no direct access to the DOM it needs to be "fed" from the main thread. The web worker could either do the analysis itself or pass it back to a Google server.

My supposition is that it's the first bit of this process that has come unstuck.

[AndrueC]

..or Visual Studio which while absolutely multi-threaded has gone so far overboard with it that it can drown the CPU in threads leaving no room for the one trying to handle the UI.

"You can continue working while the task runs in the background".

Uh huh - not unless I upgrade to a Cray.

[Michael Hoffmann]

All I can say is...

I. I. I. I. I.

Caramba!

[406 Not Acceptable]

Best use 365 for Murray Walker's biography then

[diodesign]

Walkerisms

I lol'd

C.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Gertrude Stein

I wonder what she would have made of this.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Gertrude Stein

More than e e cummings

[Eclectic Man]

Shakespeare

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."

(MacBeth)

Sorry, couldn't resist. Mine's the doublet without a first folio in the pockets.

[0x80004005]

Buffalo?

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

[Paul Kinsler]

Ahem:

Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger, Mushroom Mushroom, ...

&etc.

[A Nother Handle]

Re: Ahem:

Snake! It's a snake!

Paris, because I'm juvenile.

[skeptical i]

Spam?

Anyone try a snippet of the Monty Python skit to see what happens?

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Spam?

Trying to spam them? After all Spam is a trademark so should be capitalised.

[Anonymous Coward]

SQL Injection attack

Without the SQL?

[Emir Al Weeq]

Yeah, but

Found by Eliza Callahan. Are you sure it wasn't Vicky Pollard?

[T. F. M. Reader]

Childhood memories

My late mother used to have really long phone conversations with her lady friends who were often retelling stories or situations of interest. My mom's part of the conversation (the only one I overheard) typically consisted of "Yes... Yes... Yes... Yes..." ad infinitum. For hours. I assume it was symmetric when it was my mom's turn to regale her friends with interesting stuff.

I guess I shouldn't write up my childhood memories in Google Docs...

[Mike 137]

"Google Docs, the search giant's web-based word processing app"

Why? Can anyone see a real advantage to the user in a web based word processor?

Obviously it potentially gives Gooooooooogle access to all your copy, but ultimately qui bono?

[DBH]

Re: "Google Docs, the search giant's web-based word processing app"

Is this a serious question?

It's massively convenient

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Google Docs, the search giant's web-based word processing app"

> It's massively convenient

I think the other poster meant from the *user's* point of view.

[James Dore]

"Keystroke Kops" shurely?!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least as bad...

...is the way the text entry routine on Chromebooks mangles things typed into the Chromebook Twitter app.

[NorbertP]

"One theory proposed among those commenting on the issue is that the bug could be due to a regular expression, or regex, gone awry as a result of catastrophic backtracking."

When faced with a difficult problem, many programmers think "oh, I'll just use a regular expression". Now they have *two* problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vogon poetry?

> finding the bug that was "triggered by a poem in the middle of her novel."