Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 22:58:27 -0700 From: Doug <Doug@gorean.org> To: Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za> Cc: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Mentioning RFC numbers in /etc/services Message-ID: <37A3E203.DE0FE656@gorean.org> References: <69175.933455655@axl.noc.iafrica.com>
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Sheldon Hearn wrote: > > On Fri, 30 Jul 1999 15:05:14 MST, Doug wrote: > > > I still haven't heard anyone answer the two key (IMO) questions. > > Your questions are easier answered in reverse order: > > > and how do you justify the additional cost to parse the file for every > > single system call that uses it? > > The information is part of the comments within the file. The cost is in > disk space, and it's cheaper than fleabites. Nowhere did I mention disk space. I agree that if that were the only issue I wouldn't be raising the objection. > > Why is it better to have this in the file than in a man page, > > Since it costs nothing to have it in /etc/services, why not leave it > there along with the information with which it's associated? The > alternative is to have a manpage that contains most of the information > in /etc/services! And why is that bad? Since when is redundancy in the documentation a problem? Like you said, disk is cheap. > > My only concern is that putting it IN the file has more costs than > > benefits. > > What am I missing here, that I don't see a cost? What software scans the > lines in /etc/services beyond the comment delimiter, other than null > terminator searches? So, how many comments are you going to add? Let's say the total parsing cost to the system for all of your additions is X. X is probably a pretty small number, I'm not arguing that point at all. Now multiply X times every packet on a highly loaded server, because that's how many times ipfw is going to need to parse the file (roughly). My point is simply that the information is valuable, but it belongs in a man page. There is no reason to add a good deal of non-functional information to a file that is used by so many parts of the system. Doug To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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