Exporting array data in sysfs

From: Rolf Eike Beer
Date: Mon Sep 18 2006 - 07:59:54 EST


Hi,

I would like to put the contents of an array in sysfs files. I found no simple
way to do this, so here are my thoughts in hope someone can hand me a light.

-simple array (array of simple type like int, char* and so on)

needs:
.name, .read, .write, .num, .writenum

When exported a directory "name" is created, containing num()+1 entries. There
is one entry for each array entry plus the special entry "n". "cat n" gives
you the result of num, writing to num calls writenum to change the number of
array members. If writenum is NULL the array has fixed size.

read is read(struct whatever *, int, char *). The second argument gives the
array number, the last one the buffer to print to (as usual). write looks
similar, just as in existing sysfs interface (e.g. device_create_file()).

-complex array (array of struct)

This is even more tricky. You can't do this now if you don't know the number
of entries. If you do you can create a struct device_attribute (or similar)
for every entry and have different access functions that "know" their index.
This is horribly inefficient and ugly.

Sort of access struct could be:

.name is fmt-string containing %i (or %lli or something like this)
.members is an array of structs looking similar to what I described above for
the simple array. Now the index gives the index of the struct.
.num, .writenum as above

Nesting them is probably not worth it at all as it would look horrible. :)

Thoughts?

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