From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jens Axboe Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] list: introduce list_is_first() Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 08:35:04 -0700 Message-ID: <56699BA8.1010009@kernel.dk> References: <305feb971ae11e192f35f25d66bb7b2e28e06c39.1449755818.git.geliangtang@163.com> <566995EA.80509@kernel.dk> <20151210152357.GG29872@treble.redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Geliang Tang , "Paul E. McKenney" , Jan Kara , Josef Bacik , Josh Triplett , Seth Jennings , Jiri Kosina , Vojtech Pavlik , Pablo Neira Ayuso , Patrick McHardy , Jozsef Kadlecsik , "David S. Miller" , live-patching@vger.kernel.org, netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org, coreteam@netfilter.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-block@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Josh Poimboeuf Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20151210152357.GG29872@treble.redhat.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netfilter-devel.vger.kernel.org On 12/10/2015 08:23 AM, Josh Poimboeuf wrote: > On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 08:10:34AM -0700, Jens Axboe wrote: >> On 12/10/2015 07:17 AM, Geliang Tang wrote: >>> We already have list_is_last(), it makes sense to also add >>> list_is_first() for consistency. This list utility function >>> to check for first element in a list. >> >> Honestly, I think we already have way too many of these kind of helpers. >> IMHO they don't really help, they hurt readability. You should know how the >> list works anyway, and if you do, then it's a no-brainer what's first and >> last. If you don't, then you are bound to screw up in other ways. >> >> Just my 2 cents. > > Personally I would disagree. Something like: > > if (list_is_first(&rq->queuelist, &nd->queue)) > > is much more readable to me than: > > if (rq->queuelist.prev == &nd->queue) Both the function and your example are backwards, and hence a lot harder to comprehend than they should be. It'd be much clearer as: if (nd->queue.next == &rq->queuelist) which is a lot easier to read. Nobody should open-code a 'is this the first entry in the list' by asking 'is the previous link to my node the head', asking 'is the next entry in the list X' makes a lot more sense. I'm assuming this happened because the list_is_last was just copied and modified, instead of thinking about this for a second. > The first one takes no effort for me -- it's almost English. While the > second one takes me a few seconds (and some precious brain cycles) to > decipher. > > Maybe whether it's readable depends on how many years you've been > looking at the pattern. But IMHO we shouldn't make "having x # of years > staring at kernel code" a prerequisite for being able to read kernel > code. It's a balance, as we also should not make APIs out of everything. As I said, purely my opinion, but I think the is_last/is_first have jumped the shark. -- Jens Axboe