From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:03:06 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 03/13] revert: Don't check lone argument in get_encoding
Message-ID: <20110621160306.GH15461@elie>
In-Reply-To: <1308661489-20080-4-git-send-email-artagnon@gmail.com>

Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:

> The get_encoding function has only one callsite, and its caller makes
> sure that a NULL argument isn't passed.  Don't unnecessarily double
> check the same argument in get_encoding.

Yes, this one's pretty good, though I suspect the actual reason for
the patch is not just dead code elimination.

The patch itself gives reason to be comfortable: the "while" loop
right after the removed "if" checks the value of *p immediately, so if
callers start passing NULL, it will be pretty obvious.

I suspect the actual motivation is to avoid access to the "commit"
global, in preparation for making it local.  A nice side-benefit is
removing a translated message.