Re: [PATCH v2 6/6] midx-write: simplify error cases

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 3, 2025, 18:43 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq8qivfkcj.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <aLgVRMxNUrdScrjk@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

>> -	int result = 0;
>> +	int result = -1;
>>  	const char **keep_hashes = NULL;
>>  	struct chunkfile *cf;
>
> I personally prefer to keep the result uninitialized and then assign the
> result of `error()` to it. It's almost the same lines of code as we have
> right now, but it has the advantage that the compiler will complain
> about `result` being uninitialized if we ever forget to set it. So it's
> overall way more explicit, and the compiler protects us.
>
> But seeing that Junio previously recommended to go into the direction of
> setting it to `-1` I won't insist on such a refactoring. So please feel
> free to ignore this comment.

I am equally fine with uninitialized one, as long as compilers are trustworthy in all cases. But the code path I made a comment IIRC did not necessarily have calls to error(), so the same number of code argument does not apply. And initializing it to zero is worse than leaving it uninitialized.

Thanks.