Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] refs/files-backend: add longer-scoped copy of string to list

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2017 at 11:03:36AM +0200, Michael Haggerty wrote:

> > It feels pretty dirty, though. It would certainly be a bug if we ever
> > decided to switch affected_refnames to duplicate its strings.
> >
> > So given that your solution is only a constant-time factor worse in
> > efficiency, we should probably prefer it as the more maintainable
> > option.
> 
> This is clever, but I don't like that it requires outside code to
> change internal `string_list` structures in a way that is not
> documented to be OK.
> 
> If we cared about getting rid of the extra `O(lg N)` search (and I
> agree with you that it doesn't matter in this case), I think the clean
> way to do it would be for `string_list` to expose a method like
> 
>     struct string_list_item *string_list_insert_at_index(struct
> string_list *list, size_t index, const char *string);
> 
> and to use it, together with `string_list_find_insert_index()`, to
> avoid having to search twice.

Yes, agreed on all counts.

-Peff