You just added a field seperator ("/") to /proc output (a tag by any
other name is still a tag). What about conditional lines, not just
conditional fields? How is your descriptor file going to recognise that
a line is a subset or continuation of the previous line without some
marker? Or are we going to say that /proc developers cannot create
files in that format, even if it makes sense to the developer? E.g.
Primary record
Secondary record
Secondary record
> I am not saying that we should not change proc, only that is is
> unnecessary. You are perceiving limitations where there are none.
> That is not to say that some yahoo out there won't create a proc
> file that is completely outside the scope of the final description
> language. But if that happens, a little coersion can usually bring
> conformity. :)
An approach I cannot agree with! Forcing all future /proc output into a
simple space delimitted fixed format because that is all the "parser"
can cope with is IMHO the wrong approach. We should go for as much
flexibility in /proc output as is reasonably possible and let the
developers chose the /proc output that suits the kernel code, not
restrict the way they can represent the data.