Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 25 Apr 2001 13:08:21 -0700 | From | Dan Kegel <> | Subject | Re: /proc format (was Device Registry (DevReg) Patch 0.2.0) |
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Jesse Pollard wrote: > Personally, I think > proc_printf(fragment, "%d %d",get_portnum(usbdev), usbdev->maxchild); > (or the string "dddd ddd" with d representing a digit) > > is shorter (and faster) to parse with > fscanf(input,"%d %d",&usbdev,&maxchild); > > Than it would be to try parsing > <usb:topology port="ddddd" portnum="dddd"> > with an XML parser. > > Sorry - XML is good for some things. It is not designed to be a > interface language between a kernel and user space. > > I am NOT in favor of "one file per value", but structured data needs > to be written in a reasonable, concise manner. XML is intended for > communication between disparate systems in an exreemly precise manner > to allow some self documentation to be included when the communication > fails.
Agreed.
But one thing XML provides (potentially) is a DTD that defines meanings and formats. IMHO the kernel needs something like this for /proc (though not in DTD format!).
Has anyone ever tried to write a formal syntax for all the entries in /proc? We have bits and pieces of /proc documentation in /usr/src/linux/Documentation, but nothing you could feed directly into a parser generator. It'd be neat to have a good definition for /proc in the LSB, and have an LSB conformance test that could look in /proc and say "Yup, all the entries there conform to the spec and can be parsed properly."
(http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.2-beta/fhs-2.2-beta.txt mentions /proc, but doesn't standardize any of it, except to suggest that /etc/mtab can be a symbolic link to /proc/mounts.) - Dan - 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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