On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:21:52AM +1100, Russell Currey wrote: > 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. >
OK.. Lets hope so. > > > > 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 don't think anyone prevents 0444 | 0200 from being sent. It's just that associativity rules allow for composing things differently. > > 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. > Fair enough, maintainer gets to decide :) Balbir Singh.
