Re: [patch 18/21] vfs: seq_file: add helpers for data filling

[Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 01:06:00PM -0700, akpm@linux-foundation.org wrote:
> From: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
> 
> Add two helpers that allow access to the seq_file's own buffer, but
> hides the internal details of seq_files.
> 
> This allows easier implementation of special purpose filling
> functions.  It also cleans up some existing functions which duplicated
> the seq_file logic.

Nice, but I suspect that exporting those two would be the right thing.
That, or inlining them - we are not actually hiding anything here, seeing
that struct seq_file is declared right there in the seq_file.h.

I'm certainly fine with these helpers and associated cleanup.  Unless
somebody has realistic plans of actually hiding the seq_file implementation[1],
I'd simply inline those two in seq_file.h.  Miklos?

[1] one obvious obstacle is that callers of seq_open() may want at least to
set seq_file->private; that can be solved, of course, but I won't swear that
we have nothing beyond that