Re: [PATCH] Change "refs/" references to symbolic constants

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Feb 20, 2007, 15:46 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LRH.0.82.0702201040460.31945@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <200702201057.21398.andyparkins@gmail.com>

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, Andy Parkins wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Tuesday 2007 February 20 10:30, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> > But at least to me,
> >
> > 	if (!prefixcmp(head, PATH_REFS_HEADS))
> > 		head += strlen(PATH_REFS_HEADS);
> >
> > is easier to follow than:
> >
> >         if (ref_is_head(head))
> >                 head += STRLEN_PATH_REFS_HEADS;

Ditto for me.

Show 6 quoted lines

> Fine.  I don't really mind - and it's less work on my patch :-)
> 
> My argument in favour of the ref_is_head() method is that the prefixcmp() 
> method requires knowledge from the caller about how you tell whether a given 
> ref is a head - the second pushes that information further down the call 
> tree, abstracting it out just a little more.

That's the problem though. Too much abstraction hides away the purpose. With prefixcmp() it shows that the code cares about a string prefix. With ref_is_head() you don't know what is happening there since that might be many things like a pointer comparison, etc. and you have to look ref_is_head() implementation to be sure.

Nicolas