Re: [PATCH v4] gc: call "prune --expire 2.weeks.ago" by default

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Eh, sorry, but why?

The thing is: I want to prevent invalid dates in gc.pruneExpire from going 
unnoticed, _especially_ since they would default to "now".  IOW if you 
said something like "one.weak.ago", it would actually have the same effect 
as "now" and offer _no_ grace period.

But like you said, comparing the difference of two unsigned longs to >= 0 
might be quite stupid.  Instead, I compare them _directly_.

Since I compare the value to "now" first, and only if it is not, compare 
the approxidate() of the value to the current time stamp, I can verify 
that no invalid date was specified.

Unfortunately, this check includes future dates.  Fortunately, they do not 
make sense at all.

To make my reasoning clear, how about this comment above that if() clause?

		/*
		 * In case of an invalid date, approxidate() returns the
		 * same as approxidate("now").  Since the millisecond
		 * boundary could have been crossed between the two calls
		 * to approxidate(), we compare not only for equality,
		 * but also if the former is greater than the latter.
		 *
		 * Note: this assumes that future dates are invalid, which
		 * makes sense, really.
		 */

Hmm?

Ah,...

But C language rules haven't changed in such a way that it guarantees B to
be evaluated before A when you write "A >= B", have it?

So at least I think you would need something like this if you go that
route:

  		if (strcmp(value, "now")) {
                	unsigned long now = approxidate("now");
                	if (approxidate(value) >= now)
				return error("Invalid %s: '%s'", var, value);
			...
		}

Also the resolution of approxidate() is in seconds so millisecond boundary
does not matter, but that issue is, eh, secondary ;-).

I have to wonder if approxidate_with_error() function that takes a pointer
to receive an error condition may be a better way to solve this cleanly.