From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756916AbcHCAmu (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Aug 2016 20:42:50 -0400 Received: from zeniv.linux.org.uk ([195.92.253.2]:57328 "EHLO ZenIV.linux.org.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753725AbcHCAml (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Aug 2016 20:42:41 -0400 Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 01:42:26 +0100 From: Al Viro To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Pavel Machek , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Heiko Carstens , Baole Ni , Russell King - ARM Linux , "linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org" , Linux Kernel Mailing List , chuansheng.liu@intel.com Subject: Re: Please don't replace numeric parameter like 0444 with macro Message-ID: <20160803004226.GF2356@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.6.1 (2016-04-27) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 04:58:29PM -0400, Linus Torvalds wrote: > [ So I answered similarly to another patch, but I'll just re-iterate > and change the subject line so that it stands out a bit from the > millions of actual patches ] > > On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Pavel Machek wrote: > > > > Everyone knows what 0644 is, but noone can read S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | > > S_IRCRP | S_IROTH (*). Please don't do this. > > Absolutely. It's *much* easier to parse and understand the octal > numbers, while the symbolic macro names are just random line noise and > hard as hell to understand. You really have to think about it. > > So we should rather go the other way: convert existing bad symbolic > permission bit macro use to just use the octal numbers. > > The symbolic names are good for the *other* bits (ie sticky bit, and > the inode mode _type_ numbers etc), but for the permission bits, the > symbolic names are just insane crap. Nobody sane should ever use them. > Not in the kernel, not in user space. Except that you are inviting the mixes like S_IFDIR | 17 /* oops, should've been 017, or do we spell it 0017? */ that way. I certainly agree that this patch series had been a huge pile of manure, but "let's convert it in other direction" is inviting pretty much the same thing, with lovely potential for typos, etc.