Re: [PATCH v4 1/3] lib/vsprintf: Add support for generic FourCCs by extending %p4cc

Aditya Garg
2025-04-22T09:41:49Z

On 22-04-2025 02:13 pm, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> Hi Aditya,
>
> CC netdev
>
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2025 at 10:30, Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com> wrote:
>> On 22-04-2025 01:37 pm, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>>> On Tue, 8 Apr 2025 at 08:48, Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com> wrote:
>>>> From: Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>
>>>>
>>>> %p4cc is designed for DRM/V4L2 FourCCs with their specific quirks, but
>>>> it's useful to be able to print generic 4-character codes formatted as
>>>> an integer. Extend it to add format specifiers for printing generic
>>>> 32-bit FourCCs with various endian semantics:
>>>>
>>>> %p4ch Host byte order
>>>> %p4cn Network byte order
>>>> %p4cl Little-endian
>>>> %p4cb Big-endian
>>>>
>>>> The endianness determines how bytes are interpreted as a u32, and the
>>>> FourCC is then always printed MSByte-first (this is the opposite of
>>>> V4L/DRM FourCCs). This covers most practical cases, e.g. %p4cn would
>>>> allow printing LSByte-first FourCCs stored in host endian order
>>>> (other than the hex form being in character order, not the integer
>>>> value).
>>>>
>>>> Acked-by: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>
>>>> Reviewed-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
>>>> Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
>>>> Tested-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com>
>>>
>>> Thanks for your patch, which is now commit 1938479b2720ebc0
>>> ("lib/vsprintf: Add support for generic FourCCs by extending %p4cc")
>>> in drm-misc-next/
>>>
>>>> --- a/Documentation/core-api/printk-formats.rst
>>>> +++ b/Documentation/core-api/printk-formats.rst
>>>> @@ -648,6 +648,38 @@ Examples::
>>>> %p4cc Y10 little-endian (0x20303159)
>>>> %p4cc NV12 big-endian (0xb231564e)
>>>>
>>>> +Generic FourCC code
>>>> +-------------------
>>>> +
>>>> +::
>>>> + %p4c[hnlb] gP00 (0x67503030)
>>>> +
>>>> +Print a generic FourCC code, as both ASCII characters and its numerical
>>>> +value as hexadecimal.
>>>> +
>>>> +The generic FourCC code is always printed in the big-endian format,
>>>> +the most significant byte first. This is the opposite of V4L/DRM FourCCs.
>>>> +
>>>> +The additional ``h``, ``n``, ``l``, and ``b`` specifiers define what
>>>> +endianness is used to load the stored bytes. The data might be interpreted
>>>> +using the host byte order, network byte order, little-endian, or big-endian.
>>>> +
>>>> +Passed by reference.
>>>> +
>>>> +Examples for a little-endian machine, given &(u32)0x67503030::
>>>> +
>>>> + %p4ch gP00 (0x67503030)
>>>> + %p4cn 00Pg (0x30305067)
>>>> + %p4cl gP00 (0x67503030)
>>>> + %p4cb 00Pg (0x30305067)
>>>> +
>>>> +Examples for a big-endian machine, given &(u32)0x67503030::
>>>> +
>>>> + %p4ch gP00 (0x67503030)
>>>> + %p4cn 00Pg (0x30305067)
>>>
>>> This doesn't look right to me, as network byte order is big endian?
>>> Note that I didn't check the code.
>>
>> Originally, it was %p4cr (reverse-endian), but on the request of the maintainers, it was changed to %p4cn.
>
> Ah, I found it[1]:
>
> | so, it needs more information that this mimics htonl() / ntohl() for
> networking.
>
> IMHO this does not mimic htonl(), as htonl() is a no-op on big-endian.
> while %p4ch and %p4cl yield different results on big-endian.
>
>> So here network means reverse of host, not strictly big-endian.
>
> Please don't call it "network byte order" if that does not have the same
> meaning as in the network subsystem.
>
> Personally, I like "%p4r" (reverse) more...

I share the same view about this. But, we have to respect the maintainers request as well xD.

Still, feel free to send a patch if you want to make this change.

Cheers
Aditya