Re: ARMS WAVING!!! Proposal to fix /proc dainbrammage.

Tim Smith (tzs@tzs.net)
Fri, 23 Oct 1998 17:49:55 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> See? There are no byte order problems with "123.456" - everybody agrees
> that it is a floating point number somewhere between the integers 123 and
> 124. And that's regardless of how they represent the actual bits in
> memory.

Actually, don't a lot of people think that 123.456 is an integer between
123000 and 124000, and that 123,456 is a floating point number somewhere
between 123 and 124? This is the only possible objection I can think of
to having numbers formatted for humans in /proc, and it is a pretty lame
objection, but for completelness, I thought it should be pointed out.

Would it be reasonable to have some kind of format version number in each
entry in /proc? Perhaps the first line could be an integer that gets
bumped if the format of that entry is ever changed in a way that would
not be compatible with non-braindead existing programs? Might as well allow
for the possibility that the current reorganization of /proc (if it goes
anywhere...) might not be the last and make it easier on programs that
want to part things there.

--Tim Smith

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