Re: Why do we have both x*() and *_or_die() for "do or die"?

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason [off-list ref] writes:

Just a side-question unrelated to this patch per-se, why do we have both
x*() and *_or_die() functions in the codebase? I can't find any pattern
for one or the other.

My understanding is that x*() were meant for system library
functions.  read-index-or-die should never be x-read-index.

Quite honestly, read-index should probably have designed to die from
the beginning, with read-index-gently as a variant to report an
error instead of dying.