Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] lib: add sputchar() helper

[Rasmus Villemoes]

On 05/09/2021 01.10, Yury Norov wrote:
> There are 47 occurrences of the code snippet like this:
> 	if (buf < end)
> 	        *buf = ' ';
> 	++buf;
> 
> This patch adds a helper function sputchar() to replace opencoding.
> It adds a lot to readability, and also saves 43 bytes of text on x86.
> 
> v2: cleanup cases discovered with coccinelle script.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Yury Norov <yury.norov@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  include/linux/kernel.h |   8 ++

Sorry, but 47 cases, mostly in one .c file, is not enough justification
for adding yet another piece of random code to
the-dumping-ground-which-is-kernel.h, especially since this helper is
very specific to the needs of the vsnprintf() implementation, so
extremely unlikely to find other users.

I'm also not a fan of the sputchar name - it's unreadable at first
glance, and when you figure out it's "a _s_tring version of putchar",
that doesn't help, because its semantics are nothing like the stdio putchar.

Rasmus