Re: [PATCH] Fix some sparse warnings

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 17, 2013, 23:22 UTC
Message-ID: <7vd2qg6abf.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <51E715D8.9040307@googlemail.com>

Stefan Beller <stefanbeller@googlemail.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> And the parse_object_buffer looks like this with respect to the eaten 
> variable:
> 	struct object *parse_object_buffer(...)
> 	{
> 		int eaten = 0;
> 		if (something)
> 			return NULL;
> 		...
> 		if (something_different)
> 			eaten=1;
> 		*eaten_p = eaten;
> 	}
> ...
> Was there a particular idea or goal behind first having a local eaten
> variable, which later near the correct return of the function was used to set the 
> eaten_p?

I didn't run "blame" to see the evolution of this function, but I suspect that the original code, when the "eaten" local variable was introduced, very much tried to do exactly what you suspect. The early return codepaths you see in today's code may be much newer, added without much thinking about the exact issue you are bringing up.