From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756659AbcHBU6q (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Aug 2016 16:58:46 -0400 Received: from mail-oi0-f66.google.com ([209.85.218.66]:33011 "EHLO mail-oi0-f66.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756121AbcHBU6b (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Aug 2016 16:58:31 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Linus Torvalds Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 16:58:29 -0400 X-Google-Sender-Auth: ya-_f0Qn5WTPfQkaARZb7QSidFQ Message-ID: Subject: Please don't replace numeric parameter like 0444 with macro To: Pavel Machek , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Heiko Carstens Cc: Baole Ni , Russell King - ARM Linux , "linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org" , Linux Kernel Mailing List , chuansheng.liu@intel.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org [ So I answered similarly to another patch, but I'll just re-iterate and change the subject line so that it stands out a bit from the millions of actual patches ] On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Pavel Machek wrote: > > Everyone knows what 0644 is, but noone can read S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | > S_IRCRP | S_IROTH (*). Please don't do this. Absolutely. It's *much* easier to parse and understand the octal numbers, while the symbolic macro names are just random line noise and hard as hell to understand. You really have to think about it. So we should rather go the other way: convert existing bad symbolic permission bit macro use to just use the octal numbers. The symbolic names are good for the *other* bits (ie sticky bit, and the inode mode _type_ numbers etc), but for the permission bits, the symbolic names are just insane crap. Nobody sane should ever use them. Not in the kernel, not in user space. Linus From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: torvalds@linux-foundation.org (Linus Torvalds) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 16:58:29 -0400 Subject: Please don't replace numeric parameter like 0444 with macro Message-ID: To: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org List-Id: linux-arm-kernel.lists.infradead.org [ So I answered similarly to another patch, but I'll just re-iterate and change the subject line so that it stands out a bit from the millions of actual patches ] On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Pavel Machek wrote: > > Everyone knows what 0644 is, but noone can read S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | > S_IRCRP | S_IROTH (*). Please don't do this. Absolutely. It's *much* easier to parse and understand the octal numbers, while the symbolic macro names are just random line noise and hard as hell to understand. You really have to think about it. So we should rather go the other way: convert existing bad symbolic permission bit macro use to just use the octal numbers. The symbolic names are good for the *other* bits (ie sticky bit, and the inode mode _type_ numbers etc), but for the permission bits, the symbolic names are just insane crap. Nobody sane should ever use them. Not in the kernel, not in user space. Linus