On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 10:45:25PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > + if (opt->show_notes) { > + int raw; > + struct strbuf notebuf = STRBUF_INIT; > + > + raw = (opt->commit_format == CMIT_FMT_USERFORMAT); > + format_display_notes(commit->object.sha1, ¬ebuf, > + get_log_output_encoding(), raw); > + ctx.notes_message = notebuf.len > + ? strbuf_detach(¬ebuf, NULL) > + : xcalloc(1, 1); > + } This last line seems like it is caused by a bug in the strbuf API. Detaching an empty string will sometimes get you NULL and sometimes not. For example, this: struct strbuf foo = STRBUF_INIT; strbuf_detach(&foo, NULL); will return NULL. But this: struct strbuf foo = STRBUF_INIT; strbuf_addstr(&foo, "bar"); strbuf_reset(&foo); strbuf_detach(&foo, NULL); will get you a zero-length string. Which just seems insane to me. The whole point of strbuf_detach is that you do not have to care about the internal representation. It should probably always return a newly allocated zero-length string. Looking through a few uses of strbuf_detach, it looks like callers assume they will always get a pointer from strbuf_detach, and we are saved by implementation details. For example, sha1_file_to_archive might have an empty file, but the fact that strbuf_attach always allocates a byte means that the detach will never return NULL. Similarly, argv_array_pushf would never want to turn an empty string into an accidental NULL; it is saved by the fact that strbuf_vaddf will always preemptively allocate 64 bytes. It's possible that switching it would create bugs elsewhere (there are over 100 uses of strbuf_detach, so maybe somebody really does want this NULL behavior), but I tend to think it is just as likely to be fixing undiscovered bugs. -Peff -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html