Re: side note to ppfChdir

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Christian Reiniger wrote:

> Okok. I thought a bit about this and it can be quite nicely with the new
> URL processing code. I however don't like the idea if doing allocations and
> string copies at almost every ppfOpen () call. But then eliminating use of
> chdir () would remove another little system dependency.

You don't have to do any allocations and only very little string copies
(hey, it's not like you'll have a million char path any time soon!
MAX_PATH will prevent this (is that the name of the #define? anyway)).

> For now we stick with chdir, at least until PFile is reasonably stable. But
> I'll add it to the TODO list, and later we will switch to this
> all-plain-paths-are-absolutized method - *if* profiler and benchmarks say
> that the additional processing is ok.

I know what they'll say... For myself, this is no big problem, because I
*know* what troubles chdir() is and if it does one, I'm willing to just
avoid calling ppfChdir() myself.

> > Don't worry about me, will ya? :-) By day, I'm a system analyst on
> > weather modeling supercomputers, worrying about clustering-related
> > multithreaded kernel deadlock problems in high performance applications
> > and things like that. Layered storage subsystems, I also meddle with.
> 
> Eck! I hope you *really* like your work...

It is very cool work actually. There is very little problems happening,
the machines are very reliable. But when there IS a problem, it is
usually REALLY hairy!!!

But most of the time, I'm actually doing Ludus Design stuff. Lots of
free time!

> > > Until that is ready, please trust me that chdir () *should* be called ;)
> > 
> > I don't trust you a second, I guess that's why I like the open source
> > development model. ;-)
> 
> Grrrrrr :-[]

Hehehe! Actually, you shouldn't trust me much either! In fact, I do not
even trust *myself*, so I'd rather advise you against doing so! :-)

Well, I'm not saying to be paranoid, but I have this philosophy about
development that I like to make my own idea, and if I do not understand
the issues, I won't "trust" somebody to tell me the right thing, I'll
want to look at it myself and *get it*.

Likewise, it is not because I tell you to yank chdir() from your code
that you'll be doing it right away!

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi