Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > What way do you think is better from a maintenance point of view? > I prefer option 2 but I fear that these "special" values could confuse > future readers of the code. I recall getting confused by the redefinition of the meaning of return value from the grep_directory() function when we started threading the working-tree grep codepath at around 5b594f457a; compared to that, as long as the "special" (and "normal") values are made symbolic constants, I do not think it is too bad.