Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 05 Nov 2001 12:06:57 +0100 | From | Martin Dalecki <> | Subject | Re: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff] |
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Alexander Viro wrote: > > On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, Tim Jansen wrote: > > > So if only some programs use the 'dot-files' and the other still use the > > crappy text interface we still have the old problem for scripts, only with a > > much larger effort. > > Folks, could we please deep-six the "ASCII is tough" mentality? Idea of > native-endian data is so broken that it's not even funny. Exercise: > try to export such thing over the network. Another one: try to use > that in a shell script. One more: try to do it portably in Perl script. > > It had been tried. Many times. It had backfired 100 times out 100. > We have the same idiocy to thank for fun trying to move a disk with UFS > volume from Solaris sparc to Solaris x86. We have the same idiocy to > thank for a lot of ugliness in X. > > At the very least, use canonical bytesex and field sizes. Anything less > is just begging for trouble. And in case of procfs or its equivalents, > _use_ the_ _damn_ _ASCII_ _representations_. scanf(3) is there for > purpose.
And the purpose of scanf in system level applications is to introduce nice opportunities for buffer overruns and string formatting bugs. - 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/
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