Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:06:24 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Cc: joe.korty@ccur.com, paulus@samba.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: seperator error in __mask_snprintf_len
Message-Id: <20040115170624.2851e19a.akpm@osdl.org>
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Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com> wrote:
>
> Andrew wrote:
> > Gad.
> 
> Could you elaborate a bit on this critique, Andrew?

The code seems very complex for such a conceptually simple problem.

And doubts remain whether it is correct on particular wordsize/endianness
machines.

It seems that there is a layering violation in which this code is poking
around inside representations which should known only to the particular
architecture.  Hence, if we can find a way to provide this function using
existing architecture API's (test_bit) then everything is solved.

If this code needs some arch-provided support function then so be it. 
That's better than adding a tangle of ifdefs in generic code.

> Did I provide too many comments?

You can never provide too many comments!

Anyway, please wake me up again when you and Joe have finished.  (I agree
that making that function take a number of bits is better than taking a
number of bytes btw).

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