Subject: Re: [PATCH v13 00/12] port tag.c to use ref-filter APIs

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 13:19:33 -0700

Karthik Nayak <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 8:07 PM, Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>> ...  You can give a new format_ref_array_item()
>> that does not print but fills a strbuf to this caller, make
>> show_ref_array_item() a thin wrapper that calls it and prints it
>> with the final LF for other callers.
>>
> You're saying remove show_ref_array_item() (even the wrapper you mentioned
> above) and just have something like format_ref_array_item() which
> would output to a strbuf. and let the caller worry about the printing?

Among the current callers, the one in builtin/tag.c that wants to
trigger show_tag_lines() hack embedded in show_ref_array_item()
function can stop calling show_ref_array_item() and instead can do

	for (i = 0; i < array.nr; i++) {
		struct strbuf out = STRBUF_INIT;
        	format_ref_array_item(&out, ...);
                if (filter->lines) {
                	... append tag lines to out ...
		}
                printf("%s\n", out.buf);
                strbuf_reset(&out);
	}
                
The current and future callers of show_ref_array_item() that do not
want to trigger the show_tag_liens() hack embedded in there may
still want it to print the formatted string including the trailing
LF, so you can keep show_ref_array_item() as a thin wrapper around
format_ref_array_item() for them to call, e.g.

	show_ref_array_item(...) {
		struct strbuf out = STRBUF_INIT;
        	format_ref_array_item(&out, ...);
                printf("%s\n", out.buf);
                strbuf_release(&out);
	}

But if it has only one caller each, you may not even want to have
show_ref_array_item(), if you are going to do the "output to strbuf"
variant.