From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:41:11 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] sha1-lookup: add new "sha1_pos" function to efficiently lookup sha1
Message-ID: <20090405144111.GB2076@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <fabb9a1e0904050317o1399118erb15ddf86d0fe6c3c@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Apr 05, 2009 at 12:17:32PM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 22:59, Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> wrote:
> > +                               if (lo <= mi && mi < hi)
> > +                                       break;
> > +                               die("oops");
> 
> That's going to be an official git error message? Why not make it "The
> fatal error oops has occured, press ctrl-c to lose all your work, or
> press any other key to do the same"?

From my cursory reading of the code, this is a "cannot happen"
assertion (and there is one a few lines below, too):

+                               die("oops");
+                       }
+               }
+               if (18 <= ofs)
+                       die("cannot happen -- lo and hi are identical");
+       }

I don't think we have an established style for such assertions. In
theory, users never see it, but the whole point of it being there is
that they _might_. :) One could use the "assert" macro, though I think
its output is just as cryptic to end users. I usually do

  die("BUG: <something that makes a little bit of sense to the user>");

some examples of which you can see via "git grep BUG:".

Of course, "binary search on fire?" would probably work, too.

-Peff