Re: [HACKERS] Oh btw, about XXX

* Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> [000124 22:10] wrote:
> Don Baccus <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com> writes:
> > I think this probably explains some of the editorial comments about the
> > code. There seem to be some added by "XXX" - is that person part of the
> > current clan of developers? Comments like "This code is a crock because..."
>
> XXX isn't a signature, it's a conventional marker for a "Hey! This is
> broken! FIX ME!" kind of comment. I think the original idea was you
> could do "grep XXX *.c" if you were idly looking for problems to work
> on. Some projects use "FIXME" in the same way.

It can also mean 'blech, this should be cleaner' such as the use
of 'curproc' in the FreeBSD kernel do figure out which process is
using the current codepath, sometimes you need it and the API
doesn't pass it down to you, hence
struct proc *p = curproc; /* XXX */
which is strewn about the code.

> The only signatures I've seen in the Postgres code are initials at the
> ends of comments. XXX usually goes at the front of a gripe.

gvim even highlights them in bright inverse yellow. :)

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright(at)wintelcom(dot)net|alfred(at)freebsd(dot)org]