Subject: Re: [PATCH v9 9/9] cocci: allow padding with `strbuf_addf()`

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 19:02:47 +0100

On Mon, Jan 10 2022, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> Hi Teng,
>
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2022, Teng Long wrote:
>
>> [...] about the using "strbuf_addf(line, "%7s" , "-");" or
>> "strbuf_addstr(line, "      -");". [...]
>>
>> Why I prefer more of the former that is because, for the single line,
>> it's more readable I think.
>
> I strongly disagree. Using a format requires the reader to interpret a
> `printf()` format, to remember (if they ever knew) the rules about padding
> with `%<number>s` formats, and then to satisfy themselves that the result
> is correct.
>
> That's quite the cognitive load you put on the reader for something as
> trivial as "      -".
>
> Not a fan,
> Johannes

I think you can argue that, but saying that this series must change that
existing "%7s" format just because it happened to trip over an existin
coccinelle rule as code was changed from printf() to strbuf_addf() is
going overboard. 

Also, the ls-tree output has existing alignment issues, and the
documentation says:

    "right-justified with minimum width of 7 characters"

So I'd think we'd want to keep the %7s, and in some future change change
that format to be dynamic so we'd align things properly if some fields
were longer than 7 characters.