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Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 23:55:50 +0200
From: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
To: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@redhat.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>,
       lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       systemtap <systemtap@sources.redhat.com>,
       DLE <dle-develop@lists.sourceforge.net>,
       Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
       Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>,
       Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>, Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>,
       Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>,
       Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
       Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli <ananth@in.ibm.com>,
       Jim Keniston <jkenisto@us.ibm.com>,
       "Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH tracing/kprobes v2 1/5] tracing/kprobes: Rename special
	variables syntax
Message-ID: <20091005215548.GH6071@nowhere>
References: <20091002214834.30906.86502.stgit@dhcp-100-2-132.bos.redhat.com> <20091002214842.30906.49220.stgit@dhcp-100-2-132.bos.redhat.com> <20091003015444.GE4828@nowhere> <4AC830F0.2010003@redhat.com> <20091005191829.GA6071@nowhere> <4ACA549F.9010300@redhat.com> <20091005205826.GE6071@nowhere> <4ACA60E9.30404@redhat.com> <20091005212137.GG6071@nowhere> <4ACA6660.7020607@redhat.com>
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On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 05:34:24PM -0400, Masami Hiramatsu wrote:
> Hmm, one idea hits me, how about this? :)
> - %register
> - %%spvars (%%retval, %%arg0)


The problem is that such % or %% symbols have a specific
mean in some other well known areas.

If we borrow the % from the AT&T assembly syntax style
to use register names, that we can retrieve in gcc inline
assembly, then one may expect %% to have a meaning inspired
from the same area. %% has its sense in gcc inline assembly,
but applied there, it looks confusing.

I mean, I'm trying to think like someone reading a perf probe
command line without any documentation. The more this person
can understand this command line without documentation, the better.
We know that % is used for register names, some people know that %%
is used for register names too but when we are in gcc inline assembly
with var to reg resolution and need true registers name.
Then if I try to mirror this sense from gcc to perf probe use,
I feel confused, especially in the case of %%arg1.

In this case, we should rather have %%register and %arg0 :)

Hm, %register is a clear pattern.

Somehow, %retval looks clear too, retval is verbose enough and
% is still logical as return values are most of the time (always?)
put in a register.

But %%arg0 looks confusing.