Re: [PATCH] use strbuf_addstr() for adding constant strings to a strbuf, part 2

From: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Date: Sep 15, 2016, 19:55 UTC
Message-ID: <79f6cfb5-3b9b-2ae7-d9a3-5c1c65c7d4cf@web.de>
In-Reply-To: <20160915193804.d2mmmeard2rj6vye@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Am 15.09.2016 um 21:38 schrieb Jeff King:

Show 21 quoted lines

> On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 12:25:43PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>>>> Silly question: Is there a natural language that uses percent signs
>>>> as letters or e.g. instead of commas? :)
>>>
>>> I don't know, but if they do, they'd better get used to escaping them.
>>> :)
>>
>> I do not know either, but I am curious where that question comes
>> from.  I stared at this patch for a few minutes but couldn't guess.
>
> My initial thought is that the next step after picking this low-hanging
> fruit would be to find cases where the strings do not contain "%", and
> thus we do not have to care about formatting. But a case like:
>
>   strbuf_addf(&buf, "this does not have any percents!", foo);
>
> is simply broken (albeit in a way that we ignore foo, so it's just ugly
> code, not a real bug).
>
> So I dunno. I too am curious.

Take this for example:

- strbuf_addf(&o->obuf, _("(bad commit)\n")); + strbuf_addstr(&o->obuf, _("(bad commit)\n"));

If there's a language that uses percent signs instead of parens or as regular letters, then they need to be escaped in the translated string before, but not after the patch. As I wrote: silly.

René