lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2007]   [Jan]   [1]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
From
SubjectRe: [PATCH] Open Firmware device tree virtual filesystem
Date
>> If you *really* want (the option of) showing things as text
>> in the filesystem, you better make it so that there is a
>> one-to-one translation back to binary. For example, what
>> does this mean, is it a text string or two bytes:
>>
>> 01.02
>>
>> Yes you as a user can guess, but scripts can't (reliably).
>
> We have some extensive code in fs/openpromfs/inode.c that
> determines whether a property is text or not. I can't
> guarentee it works %100, but it's very context dependant
> (only the driver "knows") but it works for all the cases
> I've tried.

It's still a heuristic, I don't think the kernel should be
doing things like this; leave the guesswork to userland,
where different users can guess in different ways if they
want/need.

Some real life properties contain _both_ a binary part and
a text part, btw.

> I really think you're making a mountain out of a mole hill, to be
> honest :-)

Heh. There is one big problem: text representation is useless
(to scripts etc.) unless it can be transformed back to binary;
i.e., it has to be possible to reliably detect _how_ some
property is represented into text, something that cannot be
done with how openpromfs handles it.


Segher

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

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2007-01-02 00:57    [from the cache]
©2003-2011 Jasper Spaans