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Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 01:13:45 +0100
From: Martin Dalecki <dalecki@evision-ventures.com>
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To: Ricky Beam <jfbeam@bluetopia.net>
CC: Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk <roy@karlsbakk.net>,
        Linux Kernel Mail List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: /proc standards (was dot-proc interface [was: /proc
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Ricky Beam wrote:

> And for those misguided people who think processing text is faster than
> binary, you're idiots.  The values start out as binary, get converted to
> text, copied to the user, and then converted back to binary.  How the hell
> is that faster than copying the original binary value? (Answer: it isn't.)

And then converted back to ASCII for printout on the terminal ;-).
 
> And those who *will* complain that binary structures are hard to work with,
> (you're idiots too :-)) a struct is far easier to deal with than text
> processing, esp. for anyone who knows what they are doing.  Yes, changes
> to the struct do tend to break applications, but the same thing happens
> to text based inputs as well.  Perhaps some of you will remember the stink
> that arose when the layout of /proc/meminfo changed (and broke, basically,
> everything.)

Amen.

The true problem with /proc and user land applications is that around 6
years
ago people did just give up on adapting the parsers to the ever chaning
"wonderfull" ascii interfaces those times. The second problem is that
/proc
is one of the few design "inventions" in linux, which didn't get copied
over
from some other UNIX box and Linus doesn't wan't recognize that this was
A BAD DESIGN CHOICE.
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