Re: [PATCH] Replaces two GOTO statements with one IF_ELSE statement in /fs/open.c

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, Martin Waitz wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 01:38:00PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Yes, it is cleaner that way.
> 
> Well, I don't think so...
> 
> > The old trick to make the error-handling code out-of-line shouldn't be
> > needed nowadays - IS_ERR uses unlikely(), which is supposed to handle that
> > stuff.
> 
> IMHO out-of-line error handling improves readability because you have a
> clear boundary between real functionality and error handling.  If both
> are mixed up you have to look longer at the code to understand the
> control-flow.

I personally tend to prefer out-of-line error handling when there are 
multiple error paths, or the function is even slightly more complex. 

In this case the in-line error handling seems warranted, though. Doing it 
out-of-line just doesn't buy you anything in this case.

		Linus