>[good point about punctuation snipped]
>> 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.
>
>Oh, no! Here it comes again. Perhaps much more important than
>endianness or punctuation is once and for all settling the question of
>whether /proc is for humans or for programs. Because these two types of
>entities have different, often diametrically-opposed, formatting
>requirements.
>
>(My take on this question is that programs should not be looking in /proc
>at all; everything shown there should be available in binary form via
>syscall, and if you want to use the data in scripts there should be
>userspace programs that use the syscalls and provide script-appropriate
>formatting. This way, programs have no column-order or spelling issues to
>deal with (on the input side, anyway), and other format changes should be
>rare because in most cases the format will be tied to the CPU
>architecture. Meanwhile humans get to read stuff that isn't cluttered
>with format version numbers or obfuscated to make mechanical parsing easier.)
Why do programs parse /proc at all then?
procps for example?
Is all the info in /proc truly available with syscalls?
Seriously, I'm asking out of pure curiousity as I'm not an expert
in this area whatsoever. I'd like to get at the information in
/proc/cpuinfo, and some other files in /proc, but if there is a
direct way that doesn't use /proc, I'd sure like to know what it
is and how to do it. Granted of course that I haven't bothered
to try and look.... Can anyone point me to how to access the
info such as processor stepping, cpu information, etc... without
reading proc?
Thanks in advance.
-- Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocateLinux software galore: http://freshmeat.net
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