Re: [PATCH 1/7] strbuf: add "include_delim" parameter to "strbuf_split"

From: Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
Date: Mar 13, 2009, 04:48 UTC
Message-ID: <200903130548.30370.chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090312190846.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>

Le jeudi 12 mars 2009, Nanako Shiraishi a écrit :

Show 11 quoted lines

> Quoting Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org>:
> > The "strbuf_split" function used to include the delimiter character
> > at the end of the splited strbufs it produced.
> >
> > This behavior is not wanted in many cases, so this patch adds a new
> > "include_delim" parameter to the function to let us switch it on or
> > off as we want.
>
> Sorry, but I don't understand the above claim. You say "not wanted in
> many cases" but your patch updates the existing callers, all of which do
> want to include the delimiter.

In many programming languages, like Perl and Python for example, there is a "split" function that splits strings, and by default the resulting strings don't include the delimiter.

In Git there are only 2 existing callers and I think this function could be used a lot more if there was a way not to include the delimiter.

In my patch series I add one caller that don't want the delimiter so after my patch series there are already half as many callers that don't want the delimiter.

And by the way, when I mentored the GSoC sequencer project I suggested to Stephan to use strbuf_split, but we also had the problem that the delimiter was included.

> The patch would easily justify itself if it made the callers pass 0 to
> the function to decline the delimiter, and as the result it made the
> codepaths that use the result simpler. But I don't think that is what
> your patch does.

Yes, my patch does not do that, because I think including the delimiter is a special case of the more general and useful behavior of not including it.

Best regards, Christian.