From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 15 May 2001 17:22:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 15 May 2001 17:22:29 -0400 Received: from RAVEL.CODA.CS.CMU.EDU ([128.2.222.215]:44516 "EHLO ravel.coda.cs.cmu.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 15 May 2001 17:22:20 -0400 Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 17:22:19 -0400 To: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants Message-ID: <20010515172219.A5508@cs.cmu.edu> Mail-Followup-To: Linux Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.17i In-Reply-To: ; from torvalds@transmeta.com on Tue, May 15, 2001 at 11:04:27AM -0700 From: Jan Harkes Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 11:04:27AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > And using ASCII names ("eject") instead of numbers (see the "FDEJECT" and > "CDROMEJECT" etc #defines) sure as hell makes for easier maintenance and > avoids the whole issue of maintaining static numbers (all the same things > that make me hate device number maintenance makes me also hate the fact > that we need to maintain this list of ioctl numbers etc). By using > descriptive names, the "maintenance" simple does not exist. If people couldn't even agree on using the same ioctl number, why would they agree on using the same ASCII name? In other words, there will still be maintenance, it just moves the problem into a different (and hopefully more maintainable) 'namespace'. Jan