Re: [GSoC][PATCH v5 3/7] dir-iterator: add flags parameter to dir_iterator_begin

[Thomas Gummerer <t.gummerer@gmail.com>]

On 04/10, Matheus Tavares Bernardino wrote:
> > > diff --git a/dir-iterator.h b/dir-iterator.h
> > > index 970793d07a..93646c3bea 100644
> > > --- a/dir-iterator.h
> > > +++ b/dir-iterator.h
> > > @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
> > >   * A typical iteration looks like this:
> > >   *
> > >   *     int ok;
> > > - *     struct iterator *iter = dir_iterator_begin(path);
> > > + *     struct iterator *iter = dir_iterator_begin(path, 0);
> >
> > Outside of this context, we already mentione errorhandling when
> > 'ok != ITER_DONE' in his example.  This still can't happen with the
> > way the dir iterator is used here, but it serves as a reminder if
> > people are using the DIR_ITERATOR_PEDANTIC flag.  Good.
> 
> This made me think again about the documentation saying that
> dir_iterator_abort() and dir_iterator_advance() may return ITER_ERROR,
> but the implementation does not containing these possibilities.
> (Besides when the pedantic flag is used). Maybe the idea was to make
> API-users implement the check for an ITER_ERROR in case dir-iterator
> needs to start returning it in the future.

Yeah, I think that was the intention.

> But do you think such a change in dir-iterator is likely to happen?
> Maybe we could just make dir_iterator_abort() be void and remove this
> section from documentation. Then, for dir_iterator_advance() users
> would only need to check for ITER_ERROR if the pedantic flag was given
> at dir-iterator creation...

Dunno.  In a world where we have the pedantic flag, I think only
returning ITER_ERROR if that flag is given might be what we want to
do.  I can't think of a reason why we would want to return ITER_ERROR
without the pedantic flag in that case.

Though I think I would change the example the other way in that case,
and pass DIR_ITERATOR_PEDANTIC to 'dir_iterator_begin()', as it would
be easy to forget error handling otherwise, even when it is
necessary.  I'd rather err on the side of showing too much error
handling, than having people forget it and having users run into some
odd edge cases in the wild that the tests don't cover.

> Also CC-ed Michael in case he has some input