From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752775AbaFGNeK (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Jun 2014 09:34:10 -0400 Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([198.137.202.9]:59174 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752369AbaFGNeI (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Jun 2014 09:34:08 -0400 Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2014 06:34:00 -0700 From: Christoph Hellwig To: Hugh Dickins Cc: Ken Helias , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Ken Helias , Dipankar Sarma , "Paul E. McKenney" , Oleg Nesterov , Dave Jones Subject: Re: [PATCH 03/13] list: Add list_add_(before|after) macros Message-ID: <20140607133400.GA13329@infradead.org> References: <1402076072-4044-1-git-send-email-kenhelias@web.de> <1402076072-4044-3-git-send-email-kenhelias@web.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by bombadil.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Jun 06, 2014 at 12:51:35PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote: > I'll express my opinion: perhaps it's widely shared, perhaps it is not. > > I think a patch like this (and the subsequent conversions) is unhelpful > churn. > > The Linux struct list_head is designed and intended to be used for both > head and entry, and introducing aliases to make unnecessary distinctions > just hinders development instead of helping it. > > If the reader is confused at first, I hope the reader will soon learn, > without needing to rely on aliases such as these. I fully concur with Hugh - the list_head is symmetric for heads vs entires, and lots of code depends on that. In addition to that multiple functions that do exactly the same thing generall are a bad idea.