[PATCH 0/1] ref-filter.c: pass empty-string as NULL to atom parsers

From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Date: Oct 2, 2017, 05:50 UTC
Message-ID: <20171002055052.GB10729@D-10-157-251-166.dhcp4.washington.edu>

Hi,

Attached is a one-long patch series to un-distinguish between atoms without sub-arguments ("%(refname)") and atoms with empty sub-argument lists ("%(refname:)").

This addresses a user-experience issue that Peff points out:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Doh, that string_list behavior is what I was missing in my earlier
> comments. I agree this is probably the best way of doing it. I'm tempted
> to say that parse_ref_filter_atom() should do a similar thing. Right now
> we've got:
>
>   $ git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' | wc
>      2206    2206   79929
>   $ git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short)' | wc
>      2206    2206   53622
>   $ git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:)' | wc
>   fatal: unrecognized %(refname:) argument:
>       0       0       0

By treating %(refname) and %(refname:) as the same thing. Peff has convinced me that these _are_ indeed the same thing, as the first is a %(refname) atom without any sub-arguments, and the later is a %(refname) %atom with empty sub-arguments.

The reasoning is highlighted in the comment this patch adds, which makes more ergonomic the use of string_list_split in atom parser implementations.

Thank you in advance :-).

--
- Taylor