linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] Revert "memory-hotplug: add 0x prefix to HEX block_size

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Message-ID: <20100408212918.GA2716@osiris.boeblingen.de.ibm.com>
Date:	Thu, 8 Apr 2010 23:29:18 +0200
From:	Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>
To:	Américo Wang <xiyou.wangcong@...il.com>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>, Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>,
	Gerald Schaefer <gerald.schaefer@...ibm.com>, stable@...nel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Revert "memory-hotplug: add 0x prefix to HEX
 block_size_bytes"

On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 11:41:24PM +0800, Américo Wang wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 05:10:06PM +0200, Heiko Carstens wrote:
> >From: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>
> >
> >Revert ba168fc37dea145deeb8fa9e7e71c748d2e00d74 "memory-hotplug: add 0x prefix
> >to HEX block_size_bytes" since it changes the user space visible sysfs interface
> >/sys/devices/system/memory/block_size_bytes.
> >The change breaks existing user space applications which rely on the fact that
> >the output does not contain the "0x" prefix.
> 
> Odd.
> 
> Which application relies on this? Isn't the application which should
> be fixed?? It should use something like strtoul() which doesn't
> rely on '0x' prefix.

Ok, consider it the other way round: your application is doing strtoul()
with a base of 0 (since you rely on the 0x prefix) and for no good reason
it doesn't work on older kernels.
I really can't see a reason for adding additional pitfalls by _changing_
a long existing user space interface.
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