Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755441Ab1D0I57 (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:57:59 -0400 Received: from rackplans.net ([209.44.101.17]:43239 "EHLO mtl.rackplans.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755168Ab1D0I55 (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:57:57 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 616 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:57:57 EDT Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:47:40 -0400 (EDT) From: gmack@innerfire.net X-X-Sender: gmack@mtl.rackplans.net To: Christoph Hellwig cc: "Ted Ts'o" , Thiago Farina , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Steven Rostedt Subject: Re: [PATCH] linux/string.h: Introduce streq macro. In-Reply-To: <20110427064719.GB597@infradead.org> Message-ID: References: <20110427005243.GI9486@thunk.org> <20110427064719.GB597@infradead.org> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (DEB 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1991 Lines: 49 On Wed, 27 Apr 2011, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 02:47:19 -0400 > From: Christoph Hellwig > To: Ted Ts'o , Thiago Farina , > linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Steven Rostedt > Subject: Re: [PATCH] linux/string.h: Introduce streq macro. > > On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 08:52:43PM -0400, Ted Ts'o wrote: > > I don't think this is not a good idea. > > > > First of all, changing 2800 instances of strcmp will induce a huge > > amount of code churn, that will cause patches to break, etc. And > > whether streq() looks better is going to be very much a case of > > personal preference. I'm so used to !strcmp(a, b) that streq(a, b) > > would be harder for me, just because I'm not used to it. > > > > So I'd NACK a change like this to any parts of the kernel that I'm > > maintaining. If another people feel that way, it's not clear that > > having two different conventions in the kernel would necessarily help... > > Same here. Diverging from standard ANSI C just for the sake of being > different is an utterly bad idea. strcmp might not be the most natural > calling convention, but it's been in the wild for 30 years, and everyone > taking a C 101 course should know about it. > > And if you get it wrong and don't notice it just means your testing > coverage sucks badly. Knowing about it and not screwing it up are two different things. I was working on a project a few years ago and we made this exact change thanks to the backwards logic of strcmp constantly screwing people up and the bug count went down considerably. Gerhard -- Gerhard Mack gmack@innerfire.net <>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing. -- 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/