Re: [patch 1/2] ptrace, security: rename ptrace_may_access => ptrace_access_check

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: chrisw@sous-sol.org, oleg@redhat.com, roland@redhat.com,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk
Subject: Re: [patch 1/2] ptrace, security: rename ptrace_may_access => ptrace_access_check
Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 12:55:26 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20090507125526.c257c23d.akpm@linux-foundation.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20090507094947.GA4911@elte.hu>

On Thu, 7 May 2009 11:49:47 +0200
Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:

> The ptrace_may_access() methods are named confusingly - some 
> variants return a bool, while the security subsystem methods have a 
> retval convention.
> 
> Rename it to ptrace_access_check, to reduce the confusion factor. A 
> followup patch eliminates the bool usage.

s/may_access/access_check/ is a poor change.  The new name conveys less
information than the old one.

It's quite clear what the return value from "may_access" means.  It's
less clear what the return value from a function called "access_check"
means.

Switching to something like ptrace_task_accessible() or
ptrace_may_access_task() would be better.

This happens quite often.  The string "check" in the name of a
predicate function is a red flag.