Re: [PATCH] Remove a dead assignment

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > The if statement says "we might be passing NULL in fmt and in that case
> > please fall back to user_format" to human readers, but the compiler is too
> > stupid to infer such an intention, so you have to help it with your brain.
> > I have to wonder if the strbuf_expand() should be passing fmt instead of
> > user_format.  "git blame -L1082,+7 pretty.c" points at 5b16360 (pretty:
> > Initialize notes if %N is used, 2010-04-13).
> >
> > The only callsite that is introduced by that patch passes NULL to fmt, so
> > a better fix might be to do something like this instead.
> 
> If somebody cares about the reusability of the code for other callsites
> added in the future, we could do this instead.
> 
> I think this is what Johannes wanted to do from the beginning, and is a
> better fix than my previous one to remove the fmt parameter altogether.

> Subject: userformat_find_requirements(): find requirement for the correct format
> 
> This function was introduced in 5b16360 (pretty: Initialize notes if %N is
> used, 2010-04-13) to check what kind of information the "log --format=..."
> user format string wants. The function can be passed a NULL instead of a
> format string to ask it to check user_format variable kept by an earlier
> call to save_user_format().
> 
> But it unconditionally checked user_format and not the string it was
> given.  The only caller introduced by the change passes NULL, which
> kept the bug unnoticed, until a new GCC noticed that there is an
> assignment to fmt that is never used.