226551 - Large "mark as read" seconds (delay interval) value corrupted and integer preferences not validated

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Brander Roullett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030728 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030728 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1  Thunderbird build 200311119

I was trying to set a extremely large value to the mark as read text box so that
i could simulate turning the mark as read OFF.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
steps to repro:
1. boot thunderbird build 20031119
2. Tools - Options
3. select Advanced
4. expand General Settings.
5. in text box enter 999999999999 seconds (maximum number of 9's allowed)
6. click OK to accept values
7. re-open options dialog
8. click advanced
9. examine text box for data

Actual Results:  

result:
sometimes this value is 0, other times it is a large negative number such as:
-1486618624  
-727379969 
(actual examples)

Expected Results:  
999999999999

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

xref bug 234121 comment 23: the practical limit is not even the largest positive 
number you can fit in the box.

Comment 2

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy y'all,

my tb info ...
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051201 Thunderbird/1.5 - Build ID: 2005120115

- entering 16 nines causes the number displayed to change to "10000000000000000".
closing & opening the options dialog changes the display to "1874919424".
exiting & restarting tbird causes no additional change.

- entering 21 nines - or continuing from the above 16 nines - changes the display to "1.0000000000000003e+21".
closing & opening the options dialog changes the display to "1".
exiting & restarting tbird causes no additional change.

this behavior is not only disconcerting, it's wrong.

take care,
lee

Comment 3

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy y'all,

given the current behavior, shouldn't the bug title be changed? perhaps to ...

"large "mark as read" seconds values result in auto-change of value"

it is not resulting in negative numbers as the title states.

take care,
lee

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

best I can tell, anything greater than 10 digits gets messed up.
for example 10000000000
TB version 3 alpha 1 (20060311)

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Updating summary for searchability.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

as Stefan states in bug 234121 comment 21 current max value is 2147483647.

In fact ANY type = integer preference goes negative starting at 2147483648 (firefox as well) so this symptom of the problem goes well beyound mark_message_read.delay.interval. 

Does preference UI and preference: backend do any data validation, range checking?

Comment 9

[Péter]

Dear All

I have the same problem, that I do not want my e-mails to be marked as read automatically. As I have seen in this report everyone tries to solve this problem by giving a huge number for the setting "Wait x second before marking message as read".

Currently if the checkbox of this option is unchecked then the mails will be immediately marked as when they are selected.

I would propose the following solution:
 - when the checkbox is unchecked then the mails are never marked as read
 - when the checkbox is checked then the mails will be marked as read after x seconds elapse. By typing 0 into this field mails will be immediately marked as read after selection.

By using this modification the original problem, that mails never should be marked as read, and the bug is solved as well, because I do not think anybody wants to wait 9999999999999 seconds till the mails are marked as read.

Comment 10

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This will get fixed by bug 376975. Then, bug 297534 was also fixed last week.

Comment 11

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Fixed, twice over, then.