Re: [PATCH 1/4] ref-filter: factor out refname component counting

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 17, 2026, 18:07 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqqzqjckgu.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20260215090052.GA695631@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> +	if (len < 0) {
> +		int i;
> +		const char *p = refname;
> +
> +		/* Find total no of '/' separated path-components */
> +		for (i = 0; p[i]; p[i] == '/' ? i++ : *p++)
> +			;

Sorry, but I have no idea what this loop (copied verbatim from the original) is trying to do.

We start at the beginning of the refname string, and while we are in the leading run of '/' we increment i to find the end of that run. E.g., we start with refname="///foo", p points at the leftmost '/', i runs from 0 to 3 at which point p[i] points at the first non-'/' character, at which point we do *p++, to make p point at the second slash? Is the dereferencing of the pointer in *p++ a no-op that is there only to confuse readers?

And then p moves to the right until p[i] points at the end of the string. It does count the number of slashes in 'i', but there is no satisfying simple answer to this question: "what does p mean while this loop runs?".

Anyway, the conversion looks very faithful to the original.