Re: [PATCH] strbuf_readlink semantics update.

René Scharfe [off-list ref] writes:

Pierre Habouzit schrieb:

quoted

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 06:16:01PM +0000, Linus Torvalds wrote:

quoted

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Pierre Habouzit wrote:

quoted

when readlink fails, the strbuf shall not be destroyed. It's not how
read_file_or_gitlink works for example.

I disagree.

This patch just makes things worse. Just leave the "strbuf_release()" in 
_one_ place.

...
The "append or do nothing" rule is broken by strbuf_getline(), but I agree
to your reasoning.  How about refining this rule a bit to "do your thing
and roll back changes if an error occurs"?  I think it's not worth to undo
allocation extensions, but making reverting first time allocations seems
like a good idea.  Something like this?

I think this is much better than Pierre's.  Pierre's "if it is called
strbuf_*, it should always append" is a good uniformity to have in an API,
but making the caller suffer for clean-up is going backwards.  The reason
we use strbuf when we can is so that the callers do not have to worry
about memory allocation issues too much.