From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Randy Dunlap Subject: Re: New syscall: leftpad() Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:36:24 -0700 Message-ID: <56FDB478.4020609@infradead.org> References: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard@nod.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard-/L3Ra7n9ekc@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-api-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Richard Weinberger , linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org Cc: linux-api-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org Please be more careful in your description... On 03/31/16 15:33, Richard Weinberger wrote: > Recent happenings in the node.js community showed how fragile software is when > it comes to dependencies of fundamental algorithms like leftpad[1]. > A node.js package which provided ledpad vanished and broke a lot of software. leftpad > This raised our attention and we came to the conclusion that it is the kernel's > job to provide such functionality such that node.js based applications can in future > rely in Linux's "don't break userspace" rule. > We hope that glibc and Andoid's bionic will soon offer wrapper functions for this Android's > new leftpad system call. > We put leftpad into the kernel not only because of Linux's stable ABI, > also for performance reasons. > As everyone knows, within the kernel everything is faster and better. > Leftpad has millions of users, so it has to be as fast as possible. > This new system call will also help making services like left-pad.io[2] > faster and more reliable. If the leftpad() system call gets adopted by a wider user base > it might also make sense to add a generic npm() system call which acts like ioctl() > where kernel modules can register new functions that are often used by node.js. > Such functions might be, is_array(), is_int(), etc. -- ~Randy