Re: [PATCH] diff-cache path restriction fix.

From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
Date: May 25, 2005, 02:16 UTC
Message-ID: <87u0kscaob.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: <7v3bscqdlr.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> writes:

> Yes, I was trained by Paul Eggert (me says that proudly).

> Practically speaking, the only time I deliberately used > and >=
> was when I was doing some dialect of SQL that always wanted
> literal on fixed side and column on the other; I do not remember
> which was which and whose SQL anymore.

Show 5 quoted lines

> Of course I sometimes end up using them when I am trying to
> match the style of existing code.  However, for that particular
> comparison in diff-cache, there weren't any other around there
> to match, other than the "if (argc < 2 || ...)" after the loop,
> which was what I myself wrote so it does not count.

My prior programming experience has taught me to read argv > 1 as an assertion about argv, as opposed to 1 < argv, which would be an assertion about 1. In other words, as I code, I'm generally thinking about testing a variable against some sort of boundary condition (which may or may not be itself variable), and the thing that I'm testing goes first, followed by the test. As a result, 1 < argv throws me for a moment, since on first read it seems to imply the programmer was expecting the value of 1 to change.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>