Re: [PATCH] commit.c:record_author_date() use skip_prefix() instead of starts_with()

[Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
>>> -            if (!starts_with(buf, "author ")) {
>>> +            if (!skip_prefix(buf, "author ")) {
>>
>> If this is the only change, there is not much point, is there?  How does
>> this help?  Perhaps there is some way to take advantage of the
>> difference between starts_with() and skip_prefix() to simplify the rest
>> of the function?
>
> I admit I lost track, but wasn't there a discussion to use
> starts_with/ends_with when appropriate (namely, the caller is
> absolutely not interested in what the remainder of the string is
> after skipping the prefix), moving away from skip_prefix()?  Isn't
> this change going in the wrong direction?

Yes, it would be going in the wrong direction if this was all there
was to it, but the particular GSoC microproject [1] which inspired
this (incomplete) submission expects that the potential student will
dig deeper and discover how skip_prefix() can be used to achieve
greater simplification in record_author_date() and in other places in
the same file.

[1]: https://github.com/git/git.github.io/blob/master/SoC-2014-Microprojects.md