From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 05:02:25 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-log: detect dup and fdopen failure
Message-ID: <20070628050225.GI32223@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <4683211E.2010704@freedesktop.org>

Josh Triplett <josh@freedesktop.org> wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > That said, the whole "prepend 'x' to the function name" thing is obviously 
> > how git does things, but maybe it would be more readable in the long term 
> > to make the prefix be 'safe_' instead of 'x', or something like that?
> 
> If you want a more verbose name than xfoo, I personally like the foo_or_die
> convention, which reminds you explicitly that the function might kill the
> program.  safe_ might convey exactly the opposite impression.

I think the _gently suffix is already preferred for the
non-die()'ing variant of a function within Git.  For example see
setup_git_directory_gently() or lookup_commit_reference_gently().

Of course pkt-line.c goes and defines safe_read/safe_write.
And lets not forget about safe_create_dir() and
safe_create_leading_directories().

I guess we're about half-way in both directions.  Next function
declared with safe_ prefix or _gently suffix will tip the scale in
one direction or the other.  ;-)

-- 
Shawn.