Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 01:59:39PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > >> Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: >> >> > On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 09:30:32AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: >> > >> >> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> >> >> --- >> > >> > It might be worth mentioning why this conversion is pulled out from the >> > others (because its "default" case is "do not touch the pointer"). >> >> I am not sure what you mean by "pulled out from the others". I did >> not intend to keep these 3 additional patches permanently; rather, I >> did them to help Christian's rerolling the series, and I do not think >> this one should be separate from other ones that use the _default() >> variant when that happens. > > Ah, I see. I had thought you meant these to be applied on top. Ah, I do not particularly mind doing things incrementally, either. If this goes on top as a standalone patch, then the reason why it is separate from the other users of _default() is not because the way it uses the null return is special, but because it was written by a different author, I would think. The reason why _default() variant exists is because its callers want to react differently to "--foo" from the way they react to "--foo=" (with an empty string as its value), and from that point of view, this caller is not all that different from other ones, like the one that parses --color-words Christian wrote in his initial round.