Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1422635AbWHRWnH (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:43:07 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751558AbWHRWnG (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:43:06 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:48863 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1422636AbWHRWnF (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:43:05 -0400 Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:41:51 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Jeff Garzik Cc: Alan Stern , Kernel development list , Ingo Molnar , David Woodhouse , Kai Petzke , "Theodore Ts'o" Subject: Re: Complaint about return code convention in queue_work() etc. Message-Id: <20060818154151.e92d4246.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <44E63476.201@garzik.org> References: <44E63476.201@garzik.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.6; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1081 Lines: 29 On Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:43:18 -0400 Jeff Garzik wrote: > Alan Stern wrote: > > I'd like to lodge a bitter complaint about the return codes used by > > queue_work() and related functions: > > > > Why do the damn things return 0 for error and 1 for success??? > > Why don't they use negative error codes for failure, like > > everything else in the kernel?!! > > It's a standard programming idiom: return false (0) for failure, true > (non-zero) for success. Boolean. > > Certainly the kernel often uses the -errno convention, but it's not a rule. > The predominant convention in the kernel is 0==success and I do think that the change which Alan suggests would be kinder to the principle-of-least-surprise. But if you're going to change the function's return conventions, please also rename the function. - 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/