Re: [PATCH v2 5/7] diff: use skip-to-optional-val in parsing --relative

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 01:59:39PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>> 
>> > On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 09:30:32AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> >
>> >> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
>> >> ---
>> >
>> > It might be worth mentioning why this conversion is pulled out from the
>> > others (because its "default" case is "do not touch the pointer").
>> 
>> I am not sure what you mean by "pulled out from the others".  I did
>> not intend to keep these 3 additional patches permanently; rather, I
>> did them to help Christian's rerolling the series, and I do not think
>> this one should be separate from other ones that use the _default()
>> variant when that happens.
>
> Ah, I see. I had thought you meant these to be applied on top.

Ah, I do not particularly mind doing things incrementally, either.

If this goes on top as a standalone patch, then the reason why it is
separate from the other users of _default() is not because the way
it uses the null return is special, but because it was written by a
different author, I would think.  

The reason why _default() variant exists is because its callers want
to react differently to "--foo" from the way they react to "--foo="
(with an empty string as its value), and from that point of view,
this caller is not all that different from other ones, like the one
that parses --color-words Christian wrote in his initial round.