In a later patch we want to buffer all output before emitting it as a new feature ("markup moved lines") conceptually cannot be implemented in a single pass over the output. There are different approaches to buffer all output such as: * Buffering on the char level, i.e. we'd have a char[] which would grow at approximately 80 characters a line. This would keep the output completely unstructured, but might be very easy to implement, such as redirecting all output to a temporary file and working off that. The later passes over the buffer are quite complicated though, because we have to parse back any output and then decide if it should be modified. * Buffer on a line level. As the output is mostly line oriented already, this would make sense, but it still is a bit awkward as we'd have to make sense of it again by looking at the first characters of a line to decide what part of a diff a line is. * Buffer semantically. Imagine there is a formal grammar for the diff output and we'd keep the symbols of this grammar around. This keeps the highest level of structure in the buffered data, such that the actual memory requirements are less than say the first option. Instead of buffering the characters of the line, we'll buffer what we intend to do plus additional information for the specifics. An output of diff --git a/new.txt b/new.txt index fa69b07..412428c 100644 Binary files a/new.txt and b/new.txt differ could be buffered as DIFF_SYMBOL_DIFF_START + new.txt DIFF_SYMBOL_INDEX_MODE + fa69b07 412428c "non-executable" flag DIFF_SYMBOL_BINARY_FILES + new.txt This and the following patches introduce the third option of buffering by first moving any output to emit_diff_symbol, and then introducing the buffering in this function. Signed-off-by: Stefan Beller <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx> --- diff.c | 22 +++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/diff.c b/diff.c index 2f9722b382..2257d44e2c 100644 --- a/diff.c +++ b/diff.c @@ -559,6 +559,24 @@ static void emit_line(struct diff_options *o, const char *set, const char *reset emit_line_0(o, set, reset, line[0], line+1, len-1); } +enum diff_symbol { + DIFF_SYMBOL_SEPARATOR +}; + +static void emit_diff_symbol(struct diff_options *o, enum diff_symbol s, + const char *line, int len) +{ + switch (s) { + case DIFF_SYMBOL_SEPARATOR: + fprintf(o->file, "%s%c", + diff_line_prefix(o), + o->line_termination); + break; + default: + die("BUG: unknown diff symbol"); + } +} + static int new_blank_line_at_eof(struct emit_callback *ecbdata, const char *line, int len) { if (!((ecbdata->ws_rule & WS_BLANK_AT_EOF) && @@ -4833,9 +4851,7 @@ void diff_flush(struct diff_options *options) if (output_format & DIFF_FORMAT_PATCH) { if (separator) { - fprintf(options->file, "%s%c", - diff_line_prefix(options), - options->line_termination); + emit_diff_symbol(options, DIFF_SYMBOL_SEPARATOR, NULL, 0); if (options->stat_sep) { /* attach patch instead of inline */ fputs(options->stat_sep, options->file); -- 2.12.2.575.gb14f27f917