#2085 NORM CTest: Thou shalt not arbitrarily munge data.
Zarro Boogs per Child
bugtracker at laptop.org
Fri Jul 13 14:45:21 EDT 2007
#2085: Thou shalt not arbitrarily munge data.
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Reporter: krstic | Owner: dilinger
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: normal | Milestone: CTest
Component: kernel | Version: Git as of bug date
Resolution: | Keywords:
Verified: 0 |
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Comment (by wmb at firmworks.com):
Regarding dilinger's comment above:
Adding a newline is not a good idea. Device tree properties in general
contain binary information. Adding a newline destroys the data integrity.
The rationale of making "cat" output look better is not salient. "cat" is
not a user interface tool; it utility as one is accidental at best, and
only just happens to work for the special case of text files. "cat" can't
display binary files in /bin, /lib, etc. Linux has many tools for
displaying human-readable representations of various file formats. "cat"
only works as a human interface tool in the narrow case where the file
happens to be in text format.
Think of the outcry that would result if a disk filesystem gratuitously
added or deleted characters from files.
The only sane policy for a filesystem is to present its data faithfully,
without alteration. The sysfs policy of presenting data in text format
does not extend to this case, because sysfs is the primary definer of the
kernel data that it exposes. ofwfs is not the primary definer of its
data, but rather a conduit of externally-defined data (the primary
definition is the OFW specification - IEEE1275-1994).
Passing through data without alteration is the right answer for all
architectures. It is the only possible right answer. Reformatting data
for human readability is not the job of a filesystem.
--
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/2085#comment:4>
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