Re: [PATCH] ls-files: fix overeager pathspec optimization

On Fri, 8 Jan 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Given pathspecs that share a common prefix, ls-files optimized its call
into recursive directory reader by starting at the common prefix
directory.

If you have a directory "t" with an untracked file "t/junk" in it, but the
top-level .gitignore file told us to ignore "t/", this resulted in an
unexpected behaviour:

Ok, I'm not sure how "unexpected" this is, since arguably you are 
overriding the ignore file by _being_ in that directory (the same way 
index contents override ignore files), but I could go either way on that.

Your patch looks fine, although I think you did this in a very odd way.

+	at = 0;
+	memcpy(path, path_, len);
+	while (1) {
+		char *cp;
+		path[at] = '\0';
+		/*
+		 * NOTE! NOTE! NOTE!: we might want to actually lstat(2)
+		 * path[] to make sure it is a directory.
+		 */
+		if (excluded(dir, path, &dtype))
+			return 1;

The above starts by testing the empty string, and then after that test it 
goes on to the next directory component. That is just _odd_.

Wouldn't it be more natural to write the loop the other way around, ie 
_first_ look up the next directory component, and _then_ do the exclude 
processing for thoose components? 

Or is there some subtle reason I'm missing for actually checking the empty 
name?

				Linus