Re: [PATCH v3 5/7] RISC-V: remove decrement/increment dance in ISA string parser

Sunil V L
2023-06-12T07:56:00Z

On Wed, Jun 07, 2023 at 09:28:29PM +0100, Conor Dooley wrote:
> From: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
>
> While expanding on the comments in the ISA string parsing code, I
> noticed that the conditional decrement of `isa` at the end of the loop
> was a bit odd.
> The parsing code expects that at the start of the for loop, `isa` will
> point to the first character of the next unparsed extension.
> However, depending on what the next extension is, this may not be true.
> Unless the next extension is a multi-letter extension preceded by an
> underscore, `isa` will either point to the string's null-terminator or
> to the first character of the next extension, once the switch statement
> has been evaluated.
> Obviously incrementing `isa` at the end of the loop could cause it to
> increment past the null terminator or miss a single letter extension, so
> `isa` is conditionally decremented, just so that the loop can increment
> it again.
>
> It's easier to understand the code if, instead of this decrement +
> increment dance, we instead use a while loop & rely on the handling of
> individual extension types to leave `isa` pointing to the first
> character of the next extension.
> As already mentioned, this won't be the case where the following
> extension is multi-letter & preceded by an underscore. To handle that,
> invert the check and increment rather than decrement.
> Hopefully this eliminates a "huh?!?" moment the next time somebody tries
> to understand this code.
>
> Reviewed-by: Andrew Jones <ajones@ventanamicro.com>
> Signed-off-by: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
> ---

Reviewed-by: Sunil V L <sunilvl@ventanamicro.com>