Re: [PATCH 12/14] kconfig: sort found symbols by relevance

Michal Marek
2013-06-24T08:42:59Z

On 24.6.2013 09:57, Jean Delvare wrote:
> Hi Yann,
>
> Sorry for the late reply...
>
> Le Wednesday 19 June 2013 à 00:45 +0200, Yann E. MORIN a écrit :
>> From: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>
>>
>> When searching for symbols, return the symbols sorted by relevance.
>>
>> Sorting is done as thus:
>> - first, symbols with a prompt, [1]
>> - then, smallest offset, [2]
>> - then, shortest match, [3]
>> - then, highest relative match, [4]
>> - finally, alphabetical sort [5]
>>
>> So, searching (eg.) for 'P.*CI' :
>
> Nobody would actually search for that, so that's not a particularly good
> example to determine whether your sort order is sane or not.
>
>>
>> [1] Symbols of interest are probably those with a prompt, as they can be
>> changed, while symbols with no prompt are only for info. Thus:
>> PCIEASPM comes before PCI_ATS
>
> This is not necessarily true. I often look for symbols which have no
> prompt, and the information I am looking for is exactly "does this
> symbol have a prompt or is its value determined automatically"?
>
>> [2] Symbols that match earlier in the name are to be preferred over
>> symbols which match later. Thus:
>> PCI_MSI comes before WDTPCI
>
> This makes some sense, although it could have some unexpected side
> effects (e.g. FOO_BAR_PCI would be listed before SOMETHING_PCI_BAZBAZ,
> right?)
>
>> [3] The shortest match is (IMHO) more interesting than a longer one.
>> Thus:
>> PCI comes before PCMCIA
>
> This makes sense too, but I'm sure there are cases where it will be
> confusing too, and alphabetical order would do it in part too.

PCI does sort before PCMCIA alphabetically ;). Also, the match lenght
will only be different when using regular expressions, so this rule will
not matter in the usual case.

>> [4] The relative match is the ratio of the length of the match against
>> the length of the symbol. The more of a symbol name we match, the
>> more instersting that symbol is. Thus:
>> PCIEAER comes before PCIEASPM
>
> This is an obscure sort rule and I'm sure it will add more confusion
> than it will help. Alphabetical order should really be good enough at
> this point.

When the prefix matches, then I agree that most people will expect the
matches be alphabetically sorted. Maybe only do this comparison only if
s1->so != 0, otherwise fallback to the strcmp() directly?

Thanks,
Michal