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Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 18:25:52 -0700
From: jw schultz <jw@pegasys.ws>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: the userspace side of driverfs
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On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 09:38:24PM -0700, Patrick Mochel wrote:
> I agree. There has been a lot of talk on this topic, but I don't think 
> much has gotten down on paper, though there might be some in the 
> archives...
> 
> The main ideal that we're shooting for is to have one ASCII value per
> file. The ASCII part is mandatory, but there will definitely be exceptions
> where we will have an array of or multiple values per file. We want to
> minimize those instances, though. Both for the sake of easy parsing, but
> also for easy formatting within the drivers.

Good so far.  When you have one value in a file the filename
tells you what it is.  What i don't want to see is more of
the multiple values in a file without labels or headings.
eg. /proc/sys/fs/inode-state (2.4.18):
	1792	133	0	0	0	0	0
I can't really trust documentation to keep up so the only
way i can be sure what these numbers are, is to look in the
kernel source.

Please, if you must have multiple values give them labels.

If it can only be 1 dimensional put one per line with a
label.  I don't care whether whether it 'label text:  value'
or 'label_text=value'  just as long as we are consistent
about the delimiters, capitalization (don't), whitespace and
underscore/dash.

If it needs to be 2 dimensional put the labels at the top as
a comment line (/^[;#]/d).  Using fixed width fields is asking
for trouble.  I prefer tab delimited but padding the fields
for alignment is OK as would be using tabs as long as we
agree on method and the labels don't have spaces.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw@pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt
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