Subject: Re: [PATCH] cat-file: Move assignment to the buffer declaration

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 11:31:46 -0800

Alexander Kuleshov <[email-masked]> writes:

> Subject: Re: [PATCH] cat-file: Move assignment to the buffer declaration

"git shortlog" on recent history shows that it is conventional not
to upcase the sentence after the "<area>:" on titles.

This line not just "declares" but "defines" buf, so I'd phrase it
more like:

	cat-file: initialize buf to NULL at its definition

	This way is shorter than with a separate assignment.

or somesuch.

If two people posted two patches to add a new cat-file.c file and
one patch did it the way the current code does while the other patch
did it the way the code with this patch does, I would likely to pick
the latter, because it is more concise and it is more clear that
there is less chance that buf could be used uninitialized.

To be bluntly honest, however, it's such a minor thing that once it
_is_ in the tree, it's not really worth the patch noise to go and
fix it up.

> Signed-off-by: Alexander Kuleshov <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  builtin/cat-file.c | 3 +--
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/builtin/cat-file.c b/builtin/cat-file.c
> index f8d8129..840ace2 100644
> --- a/builtin/cat-file.c
> +++ b/builtin/cat-file.c
> @@ -17,14 +17,13 @@ static int cat_one_file(int opt, const char *exp_type, const char *obj_name)
>  {
>  	unsigned char sha1[20];
>  	enum object_type type;
> -	char *buf;
> +	char *buf = NULL;
>  	unsigned long size;
>  	struct object_context obj_context;
>  
>  	if (get_sha1_with_context(obj_name, 0, sha1, &obj_context))
>  		die("Not a valid object name %s", obj_name);
>  
> -	buf = NULL;

>  	switch (opt) {
>  	case 't':
>  		type = sha1_object_info(sha1, NULL);