From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Richard Weinberger Subject: Re: New syscall: leftpad() Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 10:06:05 +0200 Message-ID: <56FE2BED.2060402@nod.at> References: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard@nod.at> <56FDB478.4020609@infradead.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <56FDB478.4020609-wEGCiKHe2LqWVfeAwA7xHQ@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-api-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Randy Dunlap , linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org Cc: linux-api-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org Am 01.04.2016 um 01:36 schrieb Randy Dunlap: > Please be more careful in your description... I'm very sorry. Will do a v2 soon. ;-) > 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. > > Thanks, //richard