Re: [PATCH] linux/string.h: Introduce streq macro.

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 08:52:43PM -0400, Ted Ts'o wrote:
> I don't think this is not a good idea.
> 
> First of all, changing 2800 instances of strcmp will induce a huge
> amount of code churn, that will cause patches to break, etc.  And
> whether streq() looks better is going to be very much a case of
> personal preference.  I'm so used to !strcmp(a, b) that streq(a, b)
> would be harder for me, just because I'm not used to it.
> 
> So I'd NACK a change like this to any parts of the kernel that I'm
> maintaining.  If another people feel that way, it's not clear that
> having two different conventions in the kernel would necessarily help...

Same here.  Diverging from standard ANSI C just for the sake of being
different is an utterly bad idea.  strcmp might not be the most natural
calling convention, but it's been in the wild for 30 years, and everyone
taking a C 101 course should know about it.

And if you get it wrong and don't notice it just means your testing
coverage sucks badly.