Re: Suggested dual human/binary interface for proc/devfs

From: H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2000 - 17:20:31 EST


Followup to: <200004042126.e34LQMW28770@vindaloo.ras.ucalgary.ca>
By author: Richard Gooch <rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Well, time to throw back one of the old anti-devfs arguments:
> bloat. Parsing ASCII is a lot harder than dereferencing structure
> fields.
>
> Let's also distinguish between ASCII *output* and input. ASCII output
> makes some sense, but to force everything to be input in ASCII will
> just bloat the kernel. Let's put perl into the kernel too so that
> parsing ASCII will be easier.
>

We really do need a set of common routines for input data like this.
Right now the various /proc devices which accept input data are all
over the place, and duplicate effort. The sysctl code has the right
idea -- special handlers to accept certain input data, and
standardized formats for both input and output -- except that the rest
of the sysctl code is a mess as far as I can tell.

sysctl is a lot like SNMP MIBs. It might be a good idea to formalize
this relationship.

        -hpa

-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."

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