From: Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>
To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Subject: Strings vs symbols in notmuch-search-result-format
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:37:55 -0500
Message-ID: <87mxrnn964.fsf@raven.defaultvalue.org>
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I've started to look at the elisp, and wondered why
notmuch-search-result-format expected strings rather than symbols for
the field names, i.e.:

     (("date" . "%s ")
      ("count" . "%-7s ")
      ("authors" . "%-20s ")
      ("subject" . "%s ")
      ("tags" . "(%s)"))

instead of 

     ((date . "%s ")
      (count . "%-7s ")
      (authors . "%-20s ")
      (subject . "%s ")
      (tags . "(%s)"))

Perhaps there's a good argument for strings, but if not, the latter is
more idiomatic, and a bit more efficient too (comparisons will just be
pointer compares (via assq) rather than something like a strcmp (assoc)).

In any case, I imagine this might not be something you'd want to change
at this point -- I'm just trying to make sure I understand the current
code.

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
GPG as of 2002-11-03 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592 F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4