Joe Korty wrote:
> This release of the bitmap parser/printer continues the cycle of making
> ever-smaller changes to the base code.
> 
> The most significant change this time around is to be sure every
> character in the string is scanned for correctness.  In the previous
> version, the scan would stop on the first whitespace character following
> a non-whitespace character.  There was no determination made if that was
> the start of either embedded or trailing whitspace -- it was assumed to
> be trailing.
> 
> I gradually came to feel that examining the whole string was important, as
> the parser does not return a pointer to where it stopped as the string(3)
> family does, so it is not possible for the caller to easily determine
> if the condition stopping the scan was reasonable or not.
> 
> ChangeLog:
>  o remove trailing whitespace early termination.
>  o add leading / embedded / trailing whitespace tests.
>  o 'extern' not needed on prototypes (Bill Irwin)
>  o made terse variable names readable.
>  o continued the reduction of the algorithm to simpler forms.
> 
> This release concludes my contributions to this patch, other than changes
> driven by user requests and experience.
> 
> Against 2.6.1-mm4.
> 
> Joe

Joe,
	I've attatched a small patch with some *small* changes, and the 
addition of a whole lotta comments.  I'd like to see what you think.

Changes:
1) Added a missing '"' in the comment for the bitmap_parse function
2) Renamed 'oc' to 'old_c' for readability
3) Remove "totaldigits == 0" check at the end of bitmap_parse.  I 
believe this check is redundant.  The only way that totaldigits could be 
0 at the end of the function is if ndigits is also 0 (because they're 
both incremented at the same time), and this condition is already 
checked for at the end of each chunk parsed.  Is this correct?

Additions:
4) A whole bunch of comments.  Are these all correct?

None of the things in my patch (with the possible exception of #3) 
change the functionality of the code, which looks great.

Andrew, I agree with Paul's "thumbs-up" of Joe's patch.  My patch is 
solely meant to increase the readability of the bitmap_parse function.

Cheers!

-Matt