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Date:      Sun, 1 Nov 1998 21:46:38 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: scanf in the kernel?
Message-ID:  <199811012146.OAA27534@usr05.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <199810300813.AAA01726@dingo.cdrom.com> from "Mike Smith" at Oct 30, 98 00:13:48 am

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> Just wondering what the general feeling would be about having scanf in 
> the kernel?  As we move towards more abstract representations of things 
> (eg. device names), it's becoming more important to be able to parse 
> strings inside the kernel.
> 
> Doing this in hand-rolled code is tedious, error-prone and results in
> code that can be hard to read and maintain (as everyone does it their
> own way).
> 
> If this isn't totally repulsive, I'll roll a somewhat smaller version 
> of the libc vfscanf for general approval.

I have to say that it's repulsive.

In general, the only place strings should probably be used in the
kernel at all are in filesystem namespace exposures.

Even then, I have to say that NFS is utterly bogus in the use of
pushing strings across the user/kernel boundary for the exported
FS list.

In general, I have to say that I rather like the fact that Linux
has one use of copyinstr -- and does nto have a general copyinstr
as a result, but only a copy in for the path data for an FS path
lookup.


I think it is a mistake for FreeBSD to turn into Plan9.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.

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