Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/8] pretty: simplify if-else to reduce code duplication

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 10:17:52 +0100

On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 08:23:35AM +0100, Martin Ågren wrote:
> First we look for "auto,", then we try "always,", then we fall back to

Nit: we typically have the body carry enough context so that it makes
sense even without reading the commit subject.

> the default, which is to do exactly the same thing as we do for "auto,".
> The amount of code duplication isn't huge, but still: reading this code
> carefully requires spending at least *some* time on making sure the two
> blocks of code are indeed identical.
> 
> Rearrange the checks so that we end with the default case,
> opportunistically consuming the "auto," which may or may not be there.
> 
> In the "always," case, we don't actually *do* anything, so if we were
> into golfing, we'd just write the whole thing as a single
> 
>   if (!skip_prefix(begin, "always,", &begin)) {
>     ...
>   }
> 
> If we ever learn something new besides "always," and "auto," we'd need
> to pull things apart again. Plus we still need somewhere to place the
> comment. Let's focus on code de-duplication rather than golfing for now.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Martin Ågren <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  pretty.c | 6 ++----
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/pretty.c b/pretty.c
> index a4e5fc5c50..6a4264dd01 100644
> --- a/pretty.c
> +++ b/pretty.c
> @@ -1076,13 +1076,11 @@ static size_t parse_color(struct strbuf *sb, /* in UTF-8 */
>  		if (!end)
>  			return 0;
>  
> -		if (skip_prefix(begin, "auto,", &begin)) {
> -			if (!want_color(c->pretty_ctx->color))
> -				return end - placeholder + 1;
> -		} else if (skip_prefix(begin, "always,", &begin)) {
> +		if (skip_prefix(begin, "always,", &begin)) {
>  			/* nothing to do; we do not respect want_color at all */
>  		} else {
>  			/* the default is the same as "auto" */
> +			skip_prefix(begin, "auto,", &begin);
>  			if (!want_color(c->pretty_ctx->color))
>  				return end - placeholder + 1;
>  		}

Okay, this change should lead to the same results as before indeed. As
you mention it does require us to be more careful if we ever were to
introduce another option here. But I still think it's fine to simplify
the code like this.

Patrick