How a Turkish Alphabet Bug Hid in the Kotlin Compiler for Five Years
By
Bogdanp
Kettled twice. Extra chewy, extra trustworthy.
Summary
A Turkish software engineer, Mehmet Nuri Öztürk, reported a Kotlin standard library bug in March 2016 that turned out to be a complex, language-specific issue involving the Turkish alphabet. The bug, which caused builds to fail for Turkish-speaking developers, took five years to fully identify and fix within the Kotlin compiler. The article explores how locale-sensitive string operations (specifically the Turkish 'i' and 'I' letter case mappings) created a subtle but dangerous bug that evaded detection for years, highlighting the challenges of internationalization in programming languages.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledWhen Turkish software engineer Mehmet Nuri Öztürk posted a short message on the Kotlin discussion forum in March of 2016, he had no idea he was reporting a dangerous standard library bug that would take five years to find and fix.
All he knew was that his build didn't work.
Logic vs language: how a Turkish alphabet bug played a years-long game of hide-and-seek inside the Kotlin compiler
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