Re: Use of strbuf.buf when strbuf.len == 0

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Sep 29, 2007, 00:51 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0709281746500.3579@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070927101300.GD10289@artemis.corp>

On Thu, 27 Sep 2007, Pierre Habouzit wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
>   I can see a way, that would need special proof-reading of the strbuf
> module, but should not harm its users, that would be to change
> STRBUF_INIT to work this way:
> 
>   { .buf = "", .len = 0, .alloc = 0 }

I'd like to pipe up a bit here..

I think the above is a good fix for the current problem of wanting to always be able to use "sb->buf", but I thinkit actually has the potential to fix another issue entirely.

Namely strbuf's that are initialized from various static strings and/or strings not directly allocated with malloc().

That's not necessarily something really unusual. Wanting to initialize a string with a fixed constant value is a common problem.

And wouldn't it be nice if you could actually do that, with

	{ .buf = "static initializer", .len = 18, .alloc = 0 }

and have all the strbuf routines that modify the initializer (including making it shorter!) notice that the allocation is too short, and create a new allocation?

Hmm?

			Linus