the printk problem

[Vegard Nossum]

On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Jan Engelhardt <jengelh at medozas.de> wrote:
>
> On Saturday 2008-07-05 14:52, Vegard Nossum wrote:
>>> On Saturday 2008-07-05 00:01, Andrew Morton wrote:
>>>>
>>>>We don't know how much interest there would be in churning NIPQUAD from
>>>>the net guys.  Interestingly, there's also %C (wint_t) which is a
>>>>32-bit quantity.  So we could just go and say "%C prints an ipv4
>>>>address" and be done with it.  But there's no way of doing that for
>>>>ipv6 addresses so things would become asymmetrical there.
>>>
>>>        struct in6_addr src;
>>>        printk("Source address: %p{ipv6}\n", &src);
>>>
>>> How about %p{feature}?
>>
>>Something like this?
>>
>>+static char *custom_format(char *buf, char *end,
>>+      const char *fmt, unsigned int fmtlen, void *arg)
>
> I'd use const void *arg here, so nobody gets the idea
> that you could modify the argument while printing :)
>

Oops, of course. Thanks.

>>+{
>>+      if (!strncmp(fmt, "sym", fmtlen)) {
...
>>+      }
>
> And I assume it's then as simple as
>
>        } else if (strncmp(fmt, "nip6", fmtlen) == 0) {
>                snprintf(buf, end - buf (+1?), NIP6_FMT in expanded form,
>                         NIP6 in expanded form(arg));
>        }
>
> Hm, that's going to get a big function when everyone adds their
> fmttypes.
>

Yes. Luckily, the entry point is then fixed in a single place and it's
easy to convert it into something more dynamic :-)

A static array wouldn't help much because it still concentrates all
the names. But we could at least do a binary search on that and get
some speed improvements if it grows large.

I think the most elegant solution would be a macro similar to the
initcall macros, that adds the custom extensions to a table which is
defined by a special linker section. This allows complete
decentralization, but I don't think it's possible to do binary search
on the names anymore.

Dynamic registering/unregistering could be done too. Maybe this is a
good thing for modules...

Thoughts?

>>+
>>+      return buf;
>>+}
>>+
>> static char *number(char *buf, char *end, unsigned long long num, int base, int size, int precision, int type)
>> {
>>       /* we are called with base 8, 10 or 16, only, thus don't need "G..."  */
>>@@ -648,6 +673,25 @@ int vsnprintf(char *buf, size_t size, const char *fmt, va_list args)
>>                               continue;
>>
>>                       case 'p':
>>+                              if (fmt[1] == '{') {
>>+                                      const char *cfmt;
>>+
>>+                                      /* Skip the '%{' */
>>+                                      ++fmt;
>>+                                      ++fmt;
>>+
>
> Not this?
>
>        /* Skip the '%p{' */
>        fmt += 3;
>

Oops, the comment is wrong. It should say: "Skip the p{". But fmt += 3
is wrong. Since fmt[0] is at this point 'p', and fmt[1] is '{'. The %
and flags, etc. have already been skipped by the common code. So it
should be fmt += 2 :-)

Thanks!


Vegard

-- 
"The animistic metaphor of the bug that maliciously sneaked in while
the programmer was not looking is intellectually dishonest as it
disguises that the error is the programmer's own creation."
	-- E. W. Dijkstra, EWD1036