Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

Re:Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement by dwenzek on Wednesday October 26, 2016 @03:15AM (#12794524)

> both versions ignore an elephant in the room: defensively dealing with `entry` being absent from the list.

Indeed, both versions really have a poor taste. Both are code snippets which can only work under very restrictive assumptions. The main argument `head` is implied and the `entry` to be removed must be present. Such piece of code has to be duplicated and tuned for every list and use case.

I even wonder why Linus bothered to show this example, while he leads one of the most famous software masterpiece.

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Re:Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement by mobiuscog on Wednesday October 26, 2016 @05:01AM (#12794955)

This isn't an API though. 'head' is fine being implied, and if 'entry' doesn't exist, why is it being passed in ? That's a further code 'smell' to follow up.

Sure, you need to be massively defensive if you're writing an API or boundary, but within an owned codebase, if you're eliminating edge-cases, you should follow them all the way up.

tl;dr if you're calling remove_list_entry, only do so if you have an entry.

Or course, I'm not Linus, so I have no idea of his thought process.

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