On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 13:41 +0530, Balbir Singh wrote: > On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 02:54:13PM +1100, Russell Currey wrote: > > Symbolic macros are unintuitive and hard to read, whereas octal constants > > are much easier to interpret. Replace macros for the basic permission > > flags (user/group/other read/write/execute) with numeric constants > > instead, across the whole powerpc tree. > > > > I know Linus said otherwise, but I wonder if the churn is worth it. > At user mode (do man 2 chmod), these constants are used frequently, > even with chmod the command we use chmod a+r equivalents or chmod > u+r. My big concern with numbers is how do you know you did not > turn on the sticky bit for a file? Can you imagine if someone used > 0x644 or 0x444 would we catch it?
I would certainly expect something like that would be caught. > > Not resisting, but thinking if the churn and what follows might be > OK. So long as the constants are still in the tree people will still send patches with them (which continues to happen even though there's a checkpatch warning). Constants have the issue that the same value can be written multiple ways (which is misleading) - some of the files I touched come about the same set of permissions different ways or even mix octal values and macros within the same file. I think using octal values for rwx (and sticking to macros for things like the sticky bit) is on the side of simplicity and consistency. > > Balbir Singh.
