Re: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff]

Jakob Østergaard
2001-11-04T19:24:23Z

On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 08:19:39PM +0100, Tim Jansen wrote:
> On Sunday 04 November 2001 19:59, you wrote:
> > The idea is that if the userland application does it's parsing wrong, it
> > should either not compile at all, or abort loudly at run-time, instead of
> > getting bad values "sometimes".
>
> All the XML parser interfaces that I have seen so far allow you to do things
> that will cause the code to fail when you do stupid things or are not
> prepared that there may appear unknown elements. Or you use a DTD, and then
> your code is guaranteed to fail after a change, which may be even worse.

XML is pretty far from light-weight. And it's only human readable in theory.

I like the *idea*, but XML is the wrong implementation of that idea. Other than
that I think we could agree ;)

>
> One-value-files are a noticable exception, you must be VERY stupid if your
> code breaks because of an additional file.

hehe, agreed. The problem then is type information.

Consider:
-------------
int mf = open("/proc/meminfo/totalmem",O_RDONLY);
int32 mem;
read(mf, &mem, sizeof(mem));
-------------

Does this work ? Yes of course. But what if I ported my program to
a 64 bit arch... The program still compiles. It also runs. But the
values are no longer correct. Now *that* is hell.

Same story with ASCII.

I want type information.

--
................................................................
: jakob@unthought.net : And I see the elder races, :
:.........................: putrid forms of man :
: Jakob Østergaard : See him rise and claim the earth, :
: OZ9ABN : his downfall is at hand. :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............: