building paths

[David Relson]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 04:06:09 +0100
Matthias Andree wrote:

> David Relson <relson at osagesoftware.com> writes:
> 
> > It would be better if the function is declared:
> >
> > char *build_path(const char* dir, const char* file);
> 
> This might be a user of the mxcat() function,
> documentation in src/mxcat.h.

As a second step, I'll see if it applies.

> > and the function is responsible for allocating the storage it needs.
> > NULL could be used to indicate a problem, assuming we find a need to
> > check the result.
> >
> > The advantage of doing this is that it centralizes the allocation of
> > "dest" and removes multiple copies of the current allocation code.
> >
> > What do you think?
> 
> Good idea, go for it. I have no changes for this area in my pipe or
> workdir.
> 
> > Note:  if we change this, related function build_wordlist_path will
> > also need to be changed.
> 
> Right.

I'm also noticing that the full path to the database is only used when
opening the database and for error messages.  Perhaps the real path
could be built in ds_open(), which would be called with "pieces" 
(directory, separator, filename).  I suspect that there's a gotcha :-<