From: Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 13:43:11 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: Document advise(), adios(), admonish(), and advertise().
X-Git-Url: https://diplodocus.org/git/nmh/commitdiff_plain/989be1fb92afdec3842ac931fdcbced29ab0ba39?ds=inline

Document advise(), adios(), admonish(), and advertise().

It doesn't make their design any better.  Their "ad" prefix goes against
common advice of having distinguishable identifiers to avoid mix-ups,
and seems to be a theme that got out of hand.  The out-of-order
parameters to advertise seem due to lack of strerror(3) that's no longer
a problem.

Before:
    advertise("open", "continuing...", "couldn't read profile: %s",
        path);
Could be:
    error("couldn't read profile: %s: open: %s, continuing...\n",
        path, strerror(errno));
And the "open" is typically dropped as superfluous so there's a
repetitive leading NULL passed a lot.
---

diff --git a/sbr/error.c b/sbr/error.c
index beb4ba6d..c9fc9d87 100644
--- a/sbr/error.c
+++ b/sbr/error.c
@@ -13,9 +13,8 @@
 #include <sys/uio.h>
 
 
-/*
- * print out error message
- */
+/* advise calls advertise() with no tail to print fmt, and perhaps what,
+ * to stderr. */
 void
 advise (const char *what, const char *fmt, ...)
 {
@@ -27,9 +26,12 @@ advise (const char *what, const char *fmt, ...)
 }
 
 
-/*
- * print out error message and exit
- */
+/* adios calls advertise() with no tail to print fmt, and perhaps what,
+ * to stderr, and "ends" the program with an error exit status.  The
+ * route to exit is via the done function pointer and may not be
+ * straightforward.
+ * FIXME: Document if this function can ever return.  If not, perhaps an
+ * abort(3) at the end of the routine would make that more clear. */
 void
 adios (const char *what, const char *fmt, ...)
 {
@@ -42,9 +44,8 @@ adios (const char *what, const char *fmt, ...)
 }
 
 
-/*
- * admonish the user
- */
+/* admonish calls advertise() with a tail indicating the program
+ * continues. */
 void
 admonish (char *what, char *fmt, ...)
 {
@@ -56,9 +57,14 @@ admonish (char *what, char *fmt, ...)
 }
 
 
-/*
- * main routine for printing error messages.
- */
+/* advertise prints fmt and ap to stderr after flushing stdout.
+ * If invo_name isn't NULL or empty, it precedes the output seperated by ": ".
+ * If what isn't NULL, errno as a string is appended.
+ * A non-empty what separates fmt from errno, surrounded by " " and ": ".
+ * BUG: No space separator before errno if what is "".
+ * If tail isn't NULL or empty then ", " and tail are appended
+ * before the finishing "\n".
+ * In summary: "invo_name: fmt what: errno, tail\n". */
 void
 advertise (const char *what, char *tail, const char *fmt, va_list ap)
 {