On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 7:49 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Wed, May 16 2018, Stefan Beller wrote: > >> A common pattern with the repo_read_index function is to die if the return >> of repo_read_index is negative. Move this pattern into a function. > > Just a side-question unrelated to this patch per-se, why do we have both > x*() and *_or_die() functions in the codebase? I wondered about that myself shortly after suggesting repo_read_index_or_die(). My only guess is xfoo is better version of foo, which sometimes involves dying inside but that's not the only possible improvement. Later I guess people go with _or_die() more because it describes what the function does much better. > I can't find any pattern > for one or the other, e.g. we have both xopen() and then write_or_die(), > so it's not a matter of x*() just being for syscalls and *_or_die() > being for our own functions (also as e.g. strbuf uses x*(), not > *_or_die()). > > I'm not trying to litigate the difference and understand it could have > just emerged organically. I'm just wondering if that's the full story or > if one is preferred, or we prefer one or the other in some > circumstances. -- Duy