Bjorn Linse wrote:
> > Internally a list with a NULL pointer is supposed to be handled like an
> > empty list. This is efficient, but tricky. Nikolai just sent a patch,
> > hopefully that helps.
>
> Good, but I wonder if it is not better for getreg("a",1,1) to always
> return a mutable list (an empty mutable list in this case)? Because as
> it returns a mutable list for a register with contents (
> setreg("a",'x') ) or an empty one ( setreg("a",'') ) a plugin writer
> might come to expect that it always returns a fresh mutable list, but
> this then fails for an undefined register ( setreg("a",[]) ). Isn't
> API consistency better that a little bit of efficiency, in this case?
The NULL is supposed to be the same as an empty, mutable list. This is
tricky, because code that expects a list needs to check for the NULL and
create the list if needed.
An alternative would be to create an empty list instead of using a NULL.
However, that requires memory allocation and there will still always be
the chance of getting a NULL anyway (out of memory, mistake in the code).
We could also consider NULL and invalid list, but I would think that
puts the burden on the script writer.
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