Re: [PATCH] Rework strbuf API and semantics.

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Sep 4, 2007, 11:11 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0709041209280.28586@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <11888956802504-git-send-email-madcoder@debian.org>

Hi,

On Tue, 4 Sep 2007, Pierre Habouzit wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

>   A strbuf can be used to store byte arrays, or as an extended string 
> library. The `buf' member can be passed to any C legacy string function, 
> because strbuf operations always ensure there is a terminating \0 at the 
> end of the buffer, not accounted in the `len' field of the structure.
> 
>   A strbuf can be used to generate a string/buffer whose final size is 
> not really known, and then "strbuf_detach" can be used to get the built 
> buffer, and keep the wrapping "strbuf" structure usable for further work 
> again.
> 
>   Other interesting feature: buffer_ensure(sb, size) ensure that there 
> is enough allocated space in `sb' to put `size' new octets of data in 
> the buffer. It helps avoiding reallocating data for nothing when the 
> problem the strbuf helps to solve has a known typical size.

I like the general idea of this!

However, some comments are due:

- IMHO strbuf_grow() would be more descriptive than buffer_ensure(),

- IMHO the same goes for strbuf_free() instead of strbuf_wipe(), and

- it would be nice to split this patch into

	- the API change (with _minimal_ changes to anything outside of 
	  strbuf.[ch]), and

	- the cleanups in the rest of the code.

Ciao, Dscho