Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750763AbWBLRnN (ORCPT ); Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:43:13 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751337AbWBLRnN (ORCPT ); Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:43:13 -0500 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:47783 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750763AbWBLRnM (ORCPT ); Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:43:12 -0500 Message-ID: <43EF738C.2090109@zytor.com> Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 09:42:36 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7-1.1.fc4 (X11/20050929) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jan Engelhardt CC: linux-kernel , "'austin-group-l@opengroup.org'" , Ulrich Drepper Subject: Re: The naming of at()s is a difficult matter References: <43EEACA7.5020109@zytor.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 856 Lines: 20 Jan Engelhardt wrote: >>I have noticed that the new ...at() system calls are named in what >>appears to be a completely haphazard fashion. In Unix system calls, >>an f- prefix means it operates on a file descriptor; the -at suffix (a >>prefix would have been more consistent, but oh well) similarly >>indicates it operates on a (directory fd, pathname) pair. > > shmat operates on dirfd/pathname? > Convention collision. They unfortunately happen (yet another reason the -at convention was ill choosen); another pretty bad clash is the f- prefix for use on file descriptors versus use on FILE *... -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/