On 05/21/2013 07:38 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Michael Haggerty <mhagger@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> The condition under which gc_boundary() is called was previously >> >> if (alloc <= nr) >> >> . But by construction, nr can never exceed alloc, so the check looks >> unnecessarily mysterious. In fact, the purpose of the check is to try >> to avoid a realloc() call by shrinking the array if possible if it is >> at its allocation limit when a new element is about to be added. So >> change the check to >> >> if (nr == alloc) >> >> and add a comment to explain what's going on. >> >> Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@xxxxxxxxxxxx> >> --- >> Please check that I have properly described the purpose of this check. >> >> The way the code is written, it looks like a bad pattern of growth and >> shrinkage of the array (namely, just under the resize limit) could >> cause gc_boundary() to be called over and over again with (most of) >> the same data. I hope that the author had some reason to believe that >> such a pattern is unlikely. > > That is about comparing with "alloc", not having high and low > watermarks, right? > > I do not see "alloc <= nr" is mysterious at all; it is merely being > defensive. If nr would ever exceed alloc, then the code would be broken and would probably have already performed an illegal memory access. Pretending to support nr > alloc here is not defensive but misleading, because by that time the ship is going down anyway. On a more practical level, when I saw this code I thought to myself "that's strange, I'd better look into it because it suggests that I don't understand the meaning of nr and alloc". I think that the suggested change will help prevent the next reader from repeating the same pointless investigation. Michael -- Michael Haggerty mhagger@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/ -- 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