Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755230AbZJVM0b (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:26:31 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753341AbZJVM0b (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:26:31 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:57731 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752813AbZJVM0a (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:26:30 -0400 Message-ID: <4AE04DCF.6040908@zytor.com> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:19:27 +0900 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20091014 Fedora/3.0-2.8.b4.fc11 Thunderbird/3.0b4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mtk.manpages@gmail.com CC: Matt Helsley , Sukadev Bhattiprolu , randy.dunlap@oracle.com, arnd@arndb.de, Containers , Nathan Lynch , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Louis.Rilling@kerlabs.com, "Eric W. Biederman" , kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com, mingo@elte.hu, linux-api@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org, Alexey Dobriyan , roland@redhat.com, Pavel Emelyanov Subject: Re: [RFC][v8][PATCH 9/10]: Define clone3() syscall References: <20091013044925.GA28181@us.ibm.com> <20091016180631.GA31036@us.ibm.com> <20091019174405.GE27627@count0.beaverton.ibm.com> <4ADCDAA8.5080408@zytor.com> <20091019235012.GF27627@count0.beaverton.ibm.com> <4ADF06B7.50508@zytor.com> <4AE0444B.5070603@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 List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 935 Lines: 21 On 10/22/2009 09:14 PM, Michael Kerrisk wrote: > > So, sometimes, a number in a system call should be the bit width of > some arguments(s), sometimes it should be the number of arguments, and > sometimes (well, just occasionally, as in mmap2() and clone()) -- it > should be a version number? Does the weather play any part in the > decision? ;-) > The notion is that they are *some* kind of description on how the system call has been augmented. The bitwidths and argument numbers are non-overlapping and visually very different, so are not subject to confusion. Your argument makes about as much sense as saying the letter "a" should have the same meaning in every context. -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/