lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1998]   [Oct]   [24]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: ARMS WAVING!!! Proposal to fix /proc dainbrammage.
On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Mark H. Wood wrote:
>>[Question about having format version information in /proc]
...
> (My take on this question is that programs should not be looking in /proc
> at all; everything shown there should be available in binary form via
> syscall, and if you want to use the data in scripts there should be
> userspace programs that use the syscalls and provide script-appropriate
> formatting. This way, programs have no column-order or spelling issues to

If the data is available in binary form via a system call, you could also
have userspace programs that take that data and format it for humans. The
question is, where should formatting take place--in the kernel, or in
userspace?

Despite years of using Windows, I can sense my Unix roots crying
out "Userspace!!!" :-)

> deal with (on the input side, anyway), and other format changes should be
> rare because in most cases the format will be tied to the CPU
> architecture. Meanwhile humans get to read stuff that isn't cluttered
> with format version numbers or obfuscated to make mechanical parsing easier.)

I don't think most people would find a single line with a version number in
a /proc entry to be unduly cluttered, and things don't have to be obfuscated
to make mechanical parsing easy, as long as the parser knows the format.

--Tim Smith


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:45    [W:2.046 / U:0.084 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site