From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Al Viro Subject: Re: [RFC] readdir mess Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:38:08 +0100 Message-ID: <20080812203808.GV28946@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> References: <20080812062241.GQ28946@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> <87ej4u9nf5.fsf@devron.myhome.or.jp> <20080812181057.GR28946@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: OGAWA Hirofumi , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Linus Torvalds Return-path: Received: from zeniv.linux.org.uk ([195.92.253.2]:38904 "EHLO ZenIV.linux.org.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751582AbYHLUiL (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:38:11 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 01:21:56PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > We *must* handle partial returns by returning "success". And we do, > except for our _confusion_ about ->readdir() returning error and that > somehow "overriding" the fact that it already returned non-errors earlier > through the callback. > > All your blathering about "positive values as well" seems to ttoally > misunderstand how readdir() works. We absolutely do *not* need positive > return values, because the fact is, the only positive return value we ever > need is the "we already filled _earlier_ buffers". And that's the one > that we already do. > > The fact is, NO ERROR VALUE CAN POSSIBLY MATTER if we already returned one > or more entries to getdents/readdir(). We should return a success value. Would you care to grep for vfs_readdir() in the tree? It's not just sys_getdents(); for better of worse the thing had become a general-purpose iterator. And I'm not suggesting to pass the damn thing to caller of sys_getdents(). At all.