Re: [PATCH v2 2/8] string-list: remove unused "insert_at" parameter from add_entry

[shejialuo <shejialuo@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 19, 2025 at 03:51:19AM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 11:57:07PM +0800, shejialuo wrote:
> 
> > In "add_entry", we accept "insert_at" parameter which must be either -1
> > (auto) or between 0 and `list->nr` inclusive. Any other value is
> > invalid. When caller specify any invalid "insert_at" value, we won't
> > check the range and move the element, which would definitely cause the
> > trouble.
> > 
> > However, we only use "add_entry" in "string_list_insert" function and we
> > always pass the "-1" for "insert_at" parameter. So, we never use this
> > parameter to insert element in a user specified position. Let's delete
> > this parameter. If there is any requirement later, we need to use a
> > better way to do this.
> 
> We can see from looking at the code that removing this will not change
> the behavior. But that always makes me wonder why it was there in the
> first place, and whether we might ever want it.
> 

Yes, I agree. Actually, in my first implementation, I didn't realise
that this is redundant. However, when inspecting the code carefully, I
find out this is useless.

> The answer in this case is that we used to have another function,
> string_list_insert_at_index(), which used the extra insert_at parameter.
> The idea being that you could call string_list_find_insert_index(),
> decide whether there was something already there, and then insert
> without repeating the binary search.
> 
> But you can see in callers like 63226218ba (mailmap: use higher level
> string list functions, 2014-11-24) that this was not really that useful
> (in that commit we just try to insert and check the util pointer to see
> if we need to add the auxiliary structure).
> 
> So the function went away in f8c4ab611a (string_list: remove
> string_list_insert_at_index() from its API, 2014-11-24), and I suspect
> we won't need it again. (Also, I think these days we'd probably use a
> strmap instead anyway).
> 

Thanks for the hint. By seeing this commit, I totally understand the
history. Because we delete `string_list_insert_at_index`, we simply call
"add_entry" by specifying "auto" mode and somehow we don't delete the
legacy check in "add_entry".

But I have one question: should I include the information in the commit
message? I feel doing this would be chaty. But I somehow think we should
do this.

Thanks,
Jialuo