Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday January 02 2017, @07:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the Robert');-DROP-TABLE-students; dept.

Jennifer Null's husband had warned her before they got married that taking his name could lead to occasional frustrations in everyday life. She knew the sort of thing to expect – his family joked about it now and again, after all. And sure enough, right after the wedding, problems began.

"We moved almost immediately after we got married so it came up practically as soon as I changed my name, buying plane tickets," she says. When Jennifer Null tries to buy a plane ticket, she gets an error message on most websites. The site will say she has left the surname field blank and ask her to try again.

Instead, she has to call the airline company by phone to book a ticket – but that's not the end of the process.

"I've been asked why I'm calling and when I try to explain the situation, I've been told, 'there's no way that's true'," she says.

But to any programmer, it's painfully easy to see why "Null" could cause problems for software interacting with a database. This is because the word 'null' can be produced by a system to indicate an empty name field. 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.

[...] "Null" isn't the only example of a name that is troublesome for computers to process. There are many others. In a world that relies increasingly on databases to function, the issues for people with problematic names only get more severe.

Some individuals only have a single name, not a forename and surname. Others have surnames that are just one letter. Problems with such names have been reported before. Consider also the experiences of Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe'ekahaunaele, a Hawaiian woman who complained that state ID cards should allow citizens to display surnames even as long as hers – which is 36 characters in total. In the end, government computer systems were updated to have greater flexibility in this area.

Source: BBC.

What other names have you run into that have been problematic for computers?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @10:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @10:18AM (#448463)

    My mother tells a tale of one of her classmates, a guy called "R B" who got called up for Vietnam. Apparently single letters confuse the army, so it was noted that his name was only the letters. In all of officialdom since he's been Mr Ronly Bonly.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1