Re: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff]

From: SpaceWalker (spacewalker@altern.org)
Date: Sun Nov 04 2001 - 12:54:44 EST

Jakob Østergaard wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 06:28:47PM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> > On November 4, 2001 05:45 pm, Tim Jansen wrote:
> > > > The dot-proc file is basically a binary encoding of Lisp (or XML), e.g. it
> > > > is a list of elements, wherein an element can itself be a list (or a
> > >
> > > Why would anybody want a binary encoding?
> >
> > Because they have a computer?
>
> Yes - good reason :)
>
> The "fuzzy parsing" userland has to do today to get useful information
> out of many proc files today is not nice at all. It eats CPU, it's
> error-prone, and all in all it's just "wrong".
>
> However - having a human-readable /proc that you can use directly with
> cat, echo, your scripts, simple programs using read(), etc. is absolutely
> a *very* cool feature that I don't want to let go. It is just too damn
> practical.
>
> But building a piece of software that needs to reliably read out status
> information from a system providing something more and more resembling a GUI in
> text-files is becoming unnecessarily time-consuming and error-prone.
>
> >
> > > It needs special parsers and will be almost impossible to access from shell
> > > scripts.
> >
> > No, look, he's proposing to put the binary encoding in hidden .files. The
> > good old /proc files will continue to appear and operate as they do now.
> >
>
> Exactly.
>
> --
> ................................................................
> : jakob@unthought.net : And I see the elder races, :
> :.........................: putrid forms of man :
> : Jakob Østergaard : See him rise and claim the earth, :
> : OZ9ABN : his downfall is at hand. :
> :.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:
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A good reason could be that a simple ps -aux uses hundreds of system
calls to get the list of all the processes ... 

-- 
SpaceWalker

spacewalker@altern.org
ICQ 36157579
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