On Mon, Aug 04, 2025 at 09:01:41AM -0400, Jeff King wrote: > On Mon, Aug 04, 2025 at 09:00:12AM -0400, Jeff King wrote: > > > There are a few possible options: > > > > 1. Instead of a variable, we could just construct an artificial > > sentinel address like "1", "-1", etc. I think these technically > > fall afoul of the C standard (even if we do not access them, even > > constructing invalid pointers is not always allowed). But it's also > > something we do elsewhere, and even happens in some standard > > interfaces (e.g., mmap()'s MMAP_FAILED value). It does involve some > > annoying casts, though. > > > > 2. We can mark it as static. That gives it a definite value, but > > perhaps makes people wonder if the static-ness is important, when > > it's not. > > > > 3. We can just give it a value to shut the compiler up, even though > > nobody cares about that value. > > > > I went with (3) here as the smallest and most obvious change. > > > > Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> > > --- > > I dunno, maybe the comment just makes things more mysterious and > > doing the casts would make it more clear what is going on. > > Hmm, I guess one other option I did not consider: we could just drop the > "const". The pointers to it are "const char *", but it is fine for them > to point to a non-const variable. Maybe that is less mysterious. Initializing the value feels like a pragmatic choice to me. There is no downside, and anyone who might be puzzled by the comment is likely to git-blame(1) to your commit anyway. So I think the current version is good enough. Thanks! Patrick
