From: Junio C Hamano Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:42:15 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] add mode parameter to get_sha1 Message-ID: <7vps5xtvqw.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> In-Reply-To: <1177158380197-git-send-email-mkoegler@auto.tuwien.ac.at> Martin Koegler writes: > If the mode parameter is not NULL, get_sha1 will store > the mode of the object in it. Most existing callers pass NULL to this. Wouldn't it be cleaner to have a new get_sha1_with_mode() function, and convert the callers that care about mode to use it, like this? int get_sha1(const char *str, unsigned char sha1[20]) { unsigned discard; return get_sha1_with_mode(str, sha1, &discard); } That way, your patch would be much easier to review and would have less chance of getting it wrong. I wonder if [2/4] can be made less impact using a similar trick. Most of the existing callers that place objects in object_array do not know the mode. Only some do. +/* unknown mode */ +#define S_IFINVALID 0320000 + This hunk does not belong to [1/4]; it is part of [2/4]. Typically S_IF$TYPE macros are masked with S_IFMT (0170000) before being used, so the above value is *obviously* invalid, but it also risks our code would treat it as a symlink, we do the masking before comparison. I wonder if defining it to S_IFMT mask itself might be a safer option.