Re: PROPOSAL: /proc standards (was dot-proc interface [was: /proc

Martin Dalecki
2001-11-06T23:21:19Z

Ricky Beam wrote:

> And for those misguided people who think processing text is faster than
> binary, you're idiots. The values start out as binary, get converted to
> text, copied to the user, and then converted back to binary. How the hell
> is that faster than copying the original binary value? (Answer: it isn't.)

And then converted back to ASCII for printout on the terminal ;-).

> And those who *will* complain that binary structures are hard to work with,
> (you're idiots too :-)) a struct is far easier to deal with than text
> processing, esp. for anyone who knows what they are doing. Yes, changes
> to the struct do tend to break applications, but the same thing happens
> to text based inputs as well. Perhaps some of you will remember the stink
> that arose when the layout of /proc/meminfo changed (and broke, basically,
> everything.)

Amen.

The true problem with /proc and user land applications is that around 6
years
ago people did just give up on adapting the parsers to the ever chaning
"wonderfull" ascii interfaces those times. The second problem is that
/proc
is one of the few design "inventions" in linux, which didn't get copied
over
from some other UNIX box and Linus doesn't wan't recognize that this was
A BAD DESIGN CHOICE.