The FileSpec class is often used as a sort of a pattern -- one specifies
a bare file name to search, and we check if in matches the full file
name of an existing module (for example).
These comparisons used FileSpec::Equal, which had some support for it
(via the full=false argument), but it was not a good fit for this job.
For one, it did a symmetric comparison, which makes sense for a function
called "equal", but not for typical searches (when searching for
"/foo/bar.so", we don't want to find a module whose name is just
"bar.so"). This resulted in patterns like:
if (FileSpec::Equal(pattern, file, pattern.GetDirectory()))
which would request a "full" match only if the pattern really contained
a directory. This worked, but the intended behavior was very unobvious.
On top of that, a lot of the code wanted to handle the case of an
"empty" pattern, and treat it as matching everything. This resulted in
conditions like:
if (pattern && !FileSpec::Equal(pattern, file, pattern.GetDirectory())
which are nearly impossible to decipher.
This patch introduces a FileSpec::Match function, which does exactly
what most of FileSpec::Equal callers want, an asymmetric match between a
"pattern" FileSpec and a an actual FileSpec. Empty paterns match
everything, filename-only patterns match only the filename component.
I've tried to update all callers of FileSpec::Equal to use a simpler
interface. Those that hardcoded full=true have been changed to use
operator==. Those passing full=pattern.GetDirectory() have been changed
to use FileSpec::Match.
There was also a handful of places which hardcoded full=false. I've
changed these to use FileSpec::Match too. This is a slight change in
semantics, but it does not look like that was ever intended, and it was
more likely a result of a misunderstanding of the "proper" way to use
FileSpec::Equal.
[In an ideal world a "FileSpec" and a "FileSpec pattern" would be two
different types, but given how widespread FileSpec is, it is unlikely
we'll get there in one go. This at least provides a good starting point
by centralizing all matching behavior.]
Why do we still need the Equal method? Are there cases where full is only decided at runtime? Would it be worth to update the call sites to use == or ::Match directly? I think having both Match and Equal with these semantics is confusing and will likely reintroduce the things you just cleaned up.