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

Jakob Østergaard
2001-11-13T12:09:19Z

On Mon, Nov 12, 2001 at 02:43:41PM +0100, Pascal Schmidt wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2001, Jakob Østergaard wrote:
>
> > Now, my program needs to deal with the data, perform operations on it,
> > so naturally I need to know what kind of data I'm dealing with. Most likely,
> > my software will *expect* some certain type, but if I have no way of verifying
> > that my assumption is correct, I will lose sooner or later...
>
> Why not read everything into a 1024-bit signed variable? Will work for
> every numeric value in /proc. It's a bit of a hassle to code, but it is
> possible. You only need to know the type if you want to write a numerical
> value to a file in /proc, and even then the driver behind that /proc entry
> should do sanity checks.

So for 99.9% of all cases my program will do much much more work than is
actually needed.

I may still save the data in a database, or go over the network with it,
so I should implement 1024 bit signed integers in all of that code too ?

And what happens when we do crypto and 1024 bits is not enough ?

I think the "use rediculously large datatypes" solution is a poor one,
as it can never cover all cases in the future, and it will impose a large
overhead on existing and new applications.

--
................................................................
: 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}...............: