Dear Stefano,
In message 4BF6B724.6090307@denx.de you wrote:
Adding spaces to the variable value? This makes little sense to me. It's just a waste of storage space and boot time.
Well, I can agree with you, however I have already seen this case...
I believe you. I have seen stranger things before ;-)
Why cannot you process each variable when you read it? The we would not need any array or list at all.
There is a reason, please tell me how good it is ;-)
I thought the code could be used not only as it is, but integrated in an application linking the required object (only one, fw_env.o). An application could internally generate a list of pairs variable/values and needs a function to set them in the u-boot environment. This is the reason of the int fw_setenv_multiple(fw_env_list *list, int count) function. No need to use an external file, no need to call fw_setenv as external process. An application could link fw_env.o and call fw_setenv_multiple().
I agree with you that I can do everything in a single pass if we do not provide such kind of external interface.
Even then you probably can. Actually it may be easier for the aplication, too, when you provide something similar to classic file I/O interface - fw_env_open() would initialize the in-memory copy of the environment data, fw_env_write() could be called repeatedly to set or delete variables, one at a time, and fw_env_close() would finally compute the CRC and write the data out to persistent storage.
I guess in most cases such an interface is easier for the appli- cation, too, because it can handle variables as they appear, and it does not need to provide yet another array (with all the size limitations) for intermediate storage.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk