On Sat, May 06, 2023 at 05:14:55PM -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:

On Wed, May 3, 2023 at 11:00 AM Calvin Wan [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

While moving strbuf_add_separated_string_list() to a separate file
would mean that strbuf would no longer have a dependency on
string-list, I don't think that dependency is problematic to begin
with. Widening the boundary for strbuf as a string manipulation
library to a string and string list manipulation library seems
reasonable to me.

Oh, the high level idea behind string-list might make sense at this
level, but I was assuming Peff would show up at some point and
highlight the evils of the current string-list API[1][2][3] and how we
should avoid using, depending on, or implementing something that acts
like it.  :-)

You rang? :)

Yes, IMHO this strbuf_add_separated_string_list() is another example of
why string-list sucks: it doesn't degrade to a natural array type
(because the "util" magic requires a struct). If it were a strvec or
similar, we could just pass "const char **str, size_t len", which would
make the helper function simpler and more generally useful.

I know there may be other reasons to use a string-list in the caller
here, though (looks like it uses "nodup"). So as usual, the situation is
not so simple as "we should just switch types".

-Peff