Re: [PATCH] powerpc: Use octal numbers for file permissions

[Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:21:52AM +1100, Russell Currey wrote:
> On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 13:41 +0530, Balbir Singh wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 02:54:13PM +1100, Russell Currey wrote:
> > > Symbolic macros are unintuitive and hard to read, whereas octal constants
> > > are much easier to interpret.  Replace macros for the basic permission
> > > flags (user/group/other read/write/execute) with numeric constants
> > > instead, across the whole powerpc tree.
> > > 
> > 
> > I know Linus said otherwise, but I wonder if the churn is worth it.
> > At user mode (do man 2 chmod), these constants are used frequently,
> > even with chmod the command we use chmod a+r equivalents or chmod
> > u+r. My big concern with numbers is how do you know you did not
> > turn on the sticky bit for a file? Can you imagine if someone used
> > 0x644 or 0x444 would we catch it?
> 
> I would certainly expect something like that would be caught.
>

OK.. Lets hope so.
 
> > 
> > Not resisting, but thinking if the churn and what follows might be
> > OK.
> 
> So long as the constants are still in the tree people will still send patches
> with them (which continues to happen even though there's a checkpatch warning). 
> Constants have the issue that the same value can be written multiple ways (which
> is misleading) - some of the files I touched come about the same set of
> permissions different ways or even mix octal values and macros within the same
> file.

I don't think anyone prevents 0444 | 0200 from being sent. It's just that
associativity rules allow for composing things differently.

> 
> I think using octal values for rwx (and sticking to macros for things like the
> sticky bit) is on the side of simplicity and consistency.
>

Fair enough, maintainer gets to decide :)

Balbir Singh.