linux-kernel - Re: Please don't replace numeric parameter like 0444 with macro

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Date:	Tue, 2 Aug 2016 16:53:11 -0500
From:	Rob Landley <rob@...dley.net>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>
Cc:	Baole Ni <baolex.ni@...el.com>,
	Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
	"linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org" 
	<linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	chuansheng.liu@...el.com
Subject: Re: Please don't replace numeric parameter like 0444 with macro

On 08/02/2016 03:58 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> [ So I answered similarly to another patch, but I'll just re-iterate
> and change the subject line so that it stands out a bit from the
> millions of actual patches ]
> 
> On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz> wrote:
>>
>> Everyone knows what 0644 is, but noone can read S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR |
>> S_IRCRP | S_IROTH (*). Please don't do this.
> 
> Absolutely. It's *much* easier to parse and understand the octal
> numbers, while the symbolic macro names are just random line noise and
> hard as hell to understand. You really have to think about it.

Posix even specifies the numeric value for each macro in the chmod
command's extended description:

  http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/chmod.html

Rob