jakob@unthought.net (Jakob „stergaard)  wrote on 04.11.01 in <20011104211118.U14001@unthought.net>:
[quoteto.xps]
> On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 03:06:27PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, [iso-8859-1] Jakob %stergaard wrote:
> >
> > > So just ignore square brackets that have "=" " " and ">" between them ?
> > >
> > > What happens when someone decides  "[---->   ]" looks cooler ?
> >
> > First of all, whoever had chosen that output did a fairly idiotic thing.
> > But as for your question - you _do_ know what regular expressions are,
> > don't you?  And you do know how to do this particular regex without
> > any use of library functions, right?
>
> A regex won't tell me if  345987 is a signed or unsigned 32-bit or 64-bit
> integer,  or if it's a double.

You do not *need* that information at runtime. If you think you do, you're  
doing something badly wrong.

I cannot even imagine what program would want that information.

> Sure, implement arbitrary precision arithmetic in every single app out there
> using /proc....

Bullshit. Implement whatever arithmetic is right *for your problem*. And  
notice when the value you get doesn't fit so you can tell the user he  
needs a newer version. That's all.

There's no reason whatsoever to care what data type the kernel used.

MfG Kai