Re: Patch to fix /proc/net files.

Matthias Welwarsky (matze@stud.fbi.fh-darmstadt.de)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 15:43:20 +0100


Vojtech Pavlik wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 1998 at 01:10:24PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > This patch should convert /proc/net/{raw,tcp,udp} so that the various
> > > IP addresses therein are shown in dotted quad format rather than in
> > > little-endian hex integers.
> >
> > Changing the format is an even worse idea
>
> * Changing the format is a bad idea.
> * Leaving things as they are is a bad idea.
> * Just changing the endianity is a bad idea.
>
> Hmm, is there anything else to do except going with a bad idea then?
>

Guess no. After all the format isn't that bad, maybe it is not human
readable but as changing the format would break existing binaries, this
should be taken very carefully. I suggested changing the endianess to
network byte order, but Andreas is quite right in pointing out, that
using htonl() on application level would be the more sensible solution.

So, I think the right way is not to have the /proc/net/* stuff be very
descriptive but informative, just like the new /proc/pci implementation

Gruss,
Matthias

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