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Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 20:24:06 +0100
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jakob_=D8stergaard?= <jakob@unthought.net>
To: Tim Jansen <tim@tjansen.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff]
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In-Reply-To: <160Skz-1rDDSyC@fmrl05.sul.t-online.com>; from tim@tjansen.de on Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 08:19:39PM +0100
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On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 08:19:39PM +0100, Tim Jansen wrote:
> On Sunday 04 November 2001 19:59, you wrote:
> > The idea is that if the userland application does it's parsing wrong, it
> > should either not compile at all, or abort loudly at run-time, instead of
> > getting bad values "sometimes".
> 
> All the XML parser interfaces that I have seen so far allow you to do things 
> that will cause the code to fail when you do stupid things or are not 
> prepared that there may appear unknown elements. Or you use a DTD, and then 
> your code is guaranteed to fail after a change, which may be even worse.

XML is pretty far from light-weight.  And it's only human readable in theory.

I like the *idea*, but XML is the wrong implementation of that idea.  Other than
that I think we could agree   ;)

> 
> One-value-files are a noticable exception, you must be VERY stupid if your 
> code breaks because of an additional file.

hehe, agreed.   The problem then is type information.

Consider:
-------------
int mf = open("/proc/meminfo/totalmem",O_RDONLY);
int32 mem;
read(mf, &mem, sizeof(mem));
-------------

Does this work ?   Yes of course.  But what if I ported my program to
a 64 bit arch...  The program still compiles.  It also runs.  But the
values are no longer correct.   Now *that* is hell.

Same story with ASCII.

I want type information.

-- 
................................................................
:   jakob@unthought.net   : And I see the elder races,         :
:.........................: putrid forms of man                :
:   Jakob Østergaard      : See him rise and claim the earth,  :
:        OZ9ABN           : his downfall is at hand.           :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............: