Re: Emacs rewrite in a maintainable language

[Andy Moreton]

On Tue 13 Oct 2015, Oleh Krehel wrote:

> Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Oleh Krehel wrote:
>>> I'd like to switch all const
>>> pointers to a single "const char *" style.
>>
>> Let's not. It's more consistent to put 'const' after the type it
>> modifies, and if we're going to have a "standard" style, that's the
>> one we should have.
>
> "const char *" style is used in 85.9% of the cases. If you want to
> revert those uses to "char const *" I'll support you, since I want the
> consistency of a single style.

Consistency is helpful, but pointless churn makes version history less
useful, so please don't make this kind of change unless you are also
making a semantic change to that area of the code.

>> But really, we have better things to do.
>
> I don't. I have no problem spending time to replace "char const *" into
> "const char *". Browsing through a code base that I want to get familiar
> with and fixing a small annoyance doesn't sound bad to me.

Pointless churn. Find something that fixes an bug, or adds a useful new
feature, and work on that. You will find it more rewarding, and other
users and developers will find your contribution more helpful.

    AndyM