From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261270AbVGaBpV (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Jul 2005 21:45:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261523AbVGaBpV (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Jul 2005 21:45:21 -0400 Received: from omx3-ext.sgi.com ([192.48.171.20]:20622 "EHLO omx3.sgi.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261466AbVGaBpS (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Jul 2005 21:45:18 -0400 Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 18:45:11 -0700 From: Paul Jackson To: Christoph Lameter Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@osdl.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] String conversions for memory policy Message-Id: <20050730184511.2af8bb8a.pj@sgi.com> In-Reply-To: References: <20050729152049.4b172d78.pj@sgi.com> <20050729225432.63b3dfb0.pj@sgi.com> Organization: SGI X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.0.0beta5 (GTK+ 2.4.9; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Christoph wrote: > this could be construet as a single string I said "single token." I meant as in a single word, not a string of multiple tokens having its own internal syntax. Heck - if by 'string' you just mean a sequence of bytes, then I could construe any data representation as a 'string'. I don't know if it is a good idea in this case, but each time we add another pseudo file system interface to the kernel, we should make an effort to keep the contents of each such pseudo file to a number, a list of comparable numbers, or a single word. I'm pretty sure this convention (single number or word per file, or at most a list of numbers) has been encouraged elsewhere, though I don't see where offhand. I do think it is a good idea to be reluctant to introduce new magic syntax, such as seen in "bind={3/normal 1/high 0/dma}" in kernel-user interfaces. Though, as I noted in my previous post a few minutes ago, I sure hope we don't need zones here anyway - just nodes. -- I won't rest till it's the best ... Programmer, Linux Scalability Paul Jackson 1.925.600.0401