Opened 17 years ago
Closed 17 years ago
#1605 closed enhancement (wontfix)
cpl_port.h definition of EQUAL leads to misunderstandings in reading code that employs it
| Reported by: | PeterHalls | Owned by: | warmerdam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | normal | Milestone: | |
| Component: | default | Version: | unspecified |
| Severity: | normal | Keywords: | |
| Cc: |
Description
cpl_port.h defines EQUAL/EQUALN to perform a *case independent* comparison of two strings using strcasecmp/strncasecmp/stricmp/strnicmp as appropriate.
This behaviour is not a test of EQUALity, rather it is analogous to the SQL 'LIKE' operator, which also performs a case independent comparison of two strings. EQUALity generally implies that the two objects begin tested are equal = identical.
The present state is unecessarily confusing.
The concept of a macro that gives instant readability of purpose in such comparisons is excellent. It would be great if it were practical to rename the existing 'EQUAL' and 'EQUALN' to 'LIKE' and 'LIKEN', with EQUAL/EQUALN being introduced to do exactly what they imply: case sensitive strcmp and strncmp respectively.
Use of the EQUAL and EQUALN macro is GDAL is pervasive and I'm not about to change it. I will agree it is not immediately obvious that the comparison is case insensitive, but it is by design that I use this widely as I mostly want GDAL to be case insensitive when testing things.