Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/4] ref: add symbolic ref content check for files backend

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:41:08 -0700

Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]> writes:

> Also, I think we don't typically call the value of a symbolic ref
> "pointee", but "target". Searching for "pointee" in our codebase only
> gives a single hit, and that one is not related to symbolic refs.

Yesterday while I was studying for reviewing this series, I saw some
existing code that call them "referent".  There may also be "target".

>> +	if (!newline_pos || *(newline_pos + 1)) {
>> +		ret = fsck_report_ref(o, report,
>> +				      FSCK_MSG_REF_MISSING_NEWLINE,
>> +				      "missing newline");
>> +	}
>
> The second condition `*(newline_pos + 1)` checks whether there is any
> data after the newline, doesn't it? That indicates a different kind of
> error than "missing newline", namely that there is trailing garbage. I
> guess we'd want to report a separate info-level message for this.
>
> Also, shouldn't we use `strchr` instead of `strrchr()`? Otherwise, we're
> only checking for trailing garbage after the _last_ newline, not after
> the first one.

None of the above.  It should strbuf_rtrim() and if we removed
anything but just a single terminating LF, we are looking at
something we wouldn't ahve written.  The next check_refname_format()
call would then find "trailing garbage".

 - "refs/heads/master \n " gets rtrimmed to "refs/heads/master",
   which is "valid but curious".

 - "refs/heads/main trash\n " becomes "refs/heads/main trash",
   which is outright bad.