Re: [bug-patch] Broken patch commit: don't warn twice about the same invalid file name

[Andreas Gruenbacher]

On Friday 06 April 2012 18:41:46 Jim Meyering wrote:
> Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
> > we remember the first and last bad name here, not all the bad names of the
> > last patch (bad[0] is never cleared), so that's a bug.
> 
> Really?  Why?  It's static, so not a real leak.
> 
> It's the same code as before, but without the use-after-free.
> I see no harm (nor particular benefit) in retaining the first
> invalid name in bad[0].

That was too unclear, sorry. The new code doesn't introduce a bug, the bug is 
already there.

I can imagine two different behaviors: either we only report each invalid name 
exactly once, globally; or we treat each patch exactly the same. Behavior one 
would require to remember all bad names. I don't think this is needed or 
useful, and I would prefer behavior two. I was assuming that this is what the 
code implements, but it doesn't: it won't report the first invalid name ever 
again.

(The invalid name could be something generic like ".."; it may well be that 
every patch in an input file has the same broken patch header. IMO we should 
report problems like that every time.)

Does this kind of thinking make sense to you?

Thanks,
Andreas