Re: confusing typedefs in jsonfuncs.c - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Andrew Dunstan
Subject Re: confusing typedefs in jsonfuncs.c
Date
Msg-id 51E95609.3020808@dunslane.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to confusing typedefs in jsonfuncs.c  (Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>)
List pgsql-hackers
On 07/18/2013 09:20 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> The new jsonfuncs.c has some confusing typedef scheme.  For example, it
> has a bunch of definitions like this:
>
> typedef struct getState
> {
>      ...
> } getState, *GetState;
>
> So GetState is a pointer to getState.  I have never seen that kind of
> convention before.
>
> This then leads to code like
>
> GetState    state;
>
> state = palloc0(sizeof(getState));
>
> which has useless mental overhead.
>
> But the fact that GetState is really a pointer isn't hidden at all,
> because state is then derefenced with -> or cast from or to void*.  So
> whatever abstraction might have been intended isn't there at all.  And
> all of this is an intra-file interface anyway.
>
> And to make this even more confusing, other types such as ColumnIOData
> and JsonLexContext are not pointers but structs directly.
>
> I think a more typical PostgreSQL code convention is to use capitalized
> camelcase for structs, and use explicit pointers for pointers.  I have
> attached a patch that cleans this up, in my opinion.


I don't have a problem with this. Sometimes when you've stared at 
something for long enough you fail to notice such things, so I welcome 
more eyeballs on the code.

Note that this is an externally visible API, so anyone who has written 
an extension against it will possibly find it broken. But that's all the 
more reason to clean it now, before it makes it to a released version.

cheers

andrew



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