Re: [PATCH 4/4] bisect--helper: `bisect_reset` shell function in C

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Jun 8, 2016, 17:53 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cQpBcy+Sdhv7EXorJFZsYvH=ikh0PqGF1YShQEcPjMn_Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAFZEwPPC3WZR4dMphgZWK7UomAXEok-J8ZXvFR22+xDrFP=hEg@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 9:20 AM, Pranit Bauva <pranit.bauva@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 1:29 PM, Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Pranit Bauva <pranit.bauva@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> +       if (!file_exists(git_path_bisect_head())) {
>>> +               struct argv_array argv = ARGV_ARRAY_INIT;
>>> +               argv_array_pushl(&argv, "checkout", branch.buf, "--", NULL);
>>> +               status = run_command_v_opt(argv.argv, RUN_GIT_CMD);
>>> +               argv_array_clear(&argv);
>>> +       }
>>> +
>>> +       if (status) {
>>
>> What's the purpose of having this 'status' conditional outside of the
>> above !file_exists() conditional, which is the only place that
>> 'status' gets assigned. Likewise, 'status' itself could be declared
>> within the scope of that conditional block.
>
> I wanted to avoid nesting. In a few other parts of the code also,
> nesting is avoided as much as possible.

I figured as much, but I'm not sure that that is such a good idea in this case since it makes the code more difficult to reason about. To wit: as a reader of the code, I spent extra time trying to figure why it was structured this way and if 'status' is assigned or accessed in some other non-obvious way.