From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>,
Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, tglx@linutronix.de,
trivial@kernel.org, Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>,
Joel Schopp <jschopp@austin.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: Trailing periods in kernel messages
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:15:32 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20071220181532.f31cdcaa.akpm@linux-foundation.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <200712210243.35240.elendil@planet.nl>
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:43:33 +0100 Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> wrote:
> On Thursday 20 December 2007, Alan Cox wrote:
> > The kernel printk messages are sentences.
>
> I'm afraid that I completely and utterly disagree. Kernel messages are _not_
> sentences. The vast majority is not well-formed and does not contain any of
> the elements that are required for a proper sentence.
>
> The most kernel messages can be compared to is a rather diverse and sloppy
> enumeration. And enumerations follow completely different rules than
> sentences. It can better be characterized as a "semi-random sequence of
> context-sensitive technical messages".
>
> IMHO the existing rule that "Kernel messages do not have to be terminated
> with a period." is completely justified, though it does need some minor
> clarification on the cases in which proper punctuation _should_ be
> followed.
No-period is a kernel idiom, produces perfectly readable output, I have
never ever heard of anyone expressing the least concern over a lack of dots
at the end of their printks and 91% of kernel code agrees.
otoh the place where no-dots comes horridly unstuck is if a single printk
contains two sentences:
printk("My computer caught on fire. I hope yours does too\n");
that's really daft. It's very rare though.
Of course one could always patch syslogd to add the dots, or change printk
and add an i_am_anal=1 kernel boot option.
Andy, please have an accident with that checkpatch change and let's hope
like hell that nobody starts trying to "fix" any of this.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2007-12-21 2:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-11-29 7:35 [PATCH 6/6] tick: add a missing dot in prink Li Zefan
2007-11-29 8:58 ` Frans Pop
2007-11-29 9:29 ` Li Zefan
2007-11-29 10:20 ` Trailing periods in kernel messages (was: [PATCH 6/6] tick: add a missing dot in prink) Frans Pop
2007-11-29 11:20 ` Andrew Morton
2007-11-30 1:12 ` Trailing periods in kernel messages Li Zefan
2007-11-30 1:30 ` Joe Perches
2007-11-30 1:54 ` Li Zefan
2007-11-30 2:35 ` Joe Perches
2007-12-20 16:29 ` Andy Whitcroft
2007-12-20 21:07 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-20 21:43 ` Joe Perches
2007-12-20 21:54 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-20 22:19 ` Andrew Morton
2007-12-20 22:34 ` Randy Dunlap
2007-12-20 23:40 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-20 22:22 ` Theodore Tso
2007-12-20 23:38 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-21 15:54 ` Lennart Sorensen
2007-12-20 21:51 ` David Miller
2007-12-20 22:07 ` Joe Perches
2007-12-20 22:08 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-20 23:14 ` J.A. Magallón
2007-12-21 0:04 ` Joe Perches
2007-12-21 0:40 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-21 9:56 ` Herbert Xu
2007-12-21 10:10 ` Jan Engelhardt
2007-12-21 10:12 ` David Miller
2007-12-21 13:43 ` David Newall
2007-12-21 14:01 ` David Miller
2007-12-21 15:37 ` David Newall
2007-12-21 11:41 ` Herbert Xu
2007-12-21 11:55 ` Jan Engelhardt
2007-12-21 16:01 ` Lennart Sorensen
2007-12-22 14:04 ` Benny Amorsen
2007-12-22 20:20 ` Radoslaw Szkodzinski
2007-12-21 12:06 ` David Schwartz
2007-12-21 15:18 ` Stefan Richter
2007-12-20 22:09 ` Roland Dreier
2007-12-21 1:43 ` Frans Pop
2007-12-21 2:15 ` Andrew Morton [this message]
2007-12-21 3:12 ` David Miller
2007-12-21 10:15 ` Jan Engelhardt
2007-12-21 10:21 ` Alan Cox
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