On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 1:50 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Eric Sunshine <sunshine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> However, I'm having a tough time imagining cases in which callers >> would want same_encoding() to return true if both arguments are NULL, >> but outright crash if only one is NULL (which is the behavior even >> before this patch). In other words, same_encoding() takes advantage of >> is_encoding_utf8() for its convenience, not for its NULL-handling. >> Given that view, the two explicit is_encoding_utf8() calls in >> same_encoding() seem redundant once the same_utf_encoding() call is >> added. > > So... does that mean we'd want something like this, or do you have > something else in mind? > > int same_encoding(const char *src, const char *dst) > { > static const char utf8[] = "UTF-8"; > > if (!src) > src = utf8; > if (!dst) > dst = utf8; > if (same_utf_encoding(src, dst)) > return 1; > return !strcasecmp(src, dst); > } I am not proposing anything like that for this patch or patch series. I'm merely asking why, after this patch, same_encoding() still contains the (in my mind) now-unneeded conditional: if (is_encoding_utf8(src) && is_encoding_utf8(dst)) return 1; If I'm reading the current code correctly, same_encoding() will crash when either (but not both) of its arguments is NULL and the non-NULL argument is not a variation of "UTF-8". If both arguments are NULL, then it won't crash, but I don't believe that it was intentional that it should crash for some NULL cases but not others; rather, not crashing when both are NULL is an _accidental_ side-effect of relying upon is_encoding_utf8(). If I understood him correctly, Lars's justification for retaining the conditional in question even after the patch is to maintain the non-crashing behavior for both arguments being NULL, even though it will continue to crash when only one is NULL. That justification doesn't makes sense to me since I can't imagine clients relying on accidental behavior of sometimes crashing, sometimes not, hence my question to Lars. As for your snippet above which ensures that 'src' and 'dst' are non-NULL, that (or some variation) would be fine if we ever expect callers of same_encoding() to pass NULL for either of those arguments, but such a fix is outside the scope of this patch and even this patch series (which does not require such a fix), IMHO.