Notepad corrupt file - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

feelgood · 01-13-2006, 11:12 PM

In one of my course, specifically Software Testing and Maintenance, the instructor created 2 notepad file with simple sentence in them. He created them, typed in it and saved it separately. When opening the first one, it was ok. The second file didn't show the sentence that he typed but instead, showed box characters which indicates that the notepad file is corrupted.

I'm interested in reproducing the bug, some of my classmate were able to do that successfully but I'm having trouble. Anyone have an idea of how to reproduce the particular bug?

FngKestrel · 01-13-2006, 11:42 PM

You sure the file is corrupted? Notepad shows certain special characters as box characters. If you open the file in wordpad, it usually resolves the issue. Granted, the file was created in notepad, which means it probably is corrupted.

As for reproducing the bug, open the doc in notepad again. If it happens again, congrats. If not, well, welcome to the world of testing. Now do it 8 more times. Figure out how many times it worked and piece together what you did on the times you were able to reproduce the bug.

Have fun.

feelgood · 01-14-2006, 05:22 AM

Well, Microsoft's knowledge database wasn't very helpful. However, there was a user group dedicated to file corruption and it seems that certain strings such as "XXXXXXXXXXtest own dir" when saving as ANSI-type file and then re-opened, it seems to trigger some sort of internal Notepad method that makes the program thinks that the file is actually Unicode.

FngKestrel · 01-15-2006, 11:49 AM

I don't think the knowledge base is ever helpful. You tell the instructor yet?

01-13-2006, 11:12 PM	#1 (permalink)
feelgood Free Mars! Location: I dunno, there's white people around me saying "eh" all the time	Notepad corrupt file In one of my course, specifically Software Testing and Maintenance, the instructor created 2 notepad file with simple sentence in them. He created them, typed in it and saved it separately. When opening the first one, it was ok. The second file didn't show the sentence that he typed but instead, showed box characters which indicates that the notepad file is corrupted. I'm interested in reproducing the bug, some of my classmate were able to do that successfully but I'm having trouble. Anyone have an idea of how to reproduce the particular bug?

01-13-2006, 11:42 PM	#2 (permalink)
FngKestrel Junkie	You sure the file is corrupted? Notepad shows certain special characters as box characters. If you open the file in wordpad, it usually resolves the issue. Granted, the file was created in notepad, which means it probably is corrupted. As for reproducing the bug, open the doc in notepad again. If it happens again, congrats. If not, well, welcome to the world of testing. Now do it 8 more times. Figure out how many times it worked and piece together what you did on the times you were able to reproduce the bug. Have fun.

01-14-2006, 05:22 AM	#3 (permalink)
feelgood Free Mars! Location: I dunno, there's white people around me saying "eh" all the time	Well, Microsoft's knowledge database wasn't very helpful. However, there was a user group dedicated to file corruption and it seems that certain strings such as "XXXXXXXXXXtest own dir" when saving as ANSI-type file and then re-opened, it seems to trigger some sort of internal Notepad method that makes the program thinks that the file is actually Unicode.

01-15-2006, 11:49 AM	#4 (permalink)
FngKestrel Junkie	I don't think the knowledge base is ever helpful. You tell the instructor yet?