Date:   Fri, 30 Aug 2019 17:47:16 +0200
From:   Uwe Kleine-König <uwe@...ine-koenig.org>
To:     Petr Mladek <pmladek@...e.com>
Cc:     Rasmus Villemoes <linux@...musvillemoes.dk>,
        Juergen Gross <jgross@...e.com>,
        Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky.work@...il.com>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@...ux.intel.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        metux IT consult Enrico Weigelt <lkml@...ux.net>,
        linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] vsprintf: introduce %dE for error constants

Hello Petr,

On 8/30/19 11:06 AM, Petr Mladek wrote:
> On Thu 2019-08-29 19:39:45, Uwe Kleine-König  wrote:
>> On 8/29/19 11:09 AM, Rasmus Villemoes wrote:
>>> On 29/08/2019 10.27, Juergen Gross wrote:
>>>> Hmm, what about already existing format strings conatining "%dE"?
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I could find only one (drivers/staging/speakup/speakup_bns.c), but
>>>> nevertheless...
>>>
>>> Indeed, Uwe still needs to respond to how he wants to handle that. I
>>
>> This is indeed bad and I didn't expect that. I just took a quick look
>> and this string is indeed used as sprintf format string.
> 
> Hmm, it seems that solving this might be pretty tricky.

I thought about this and we could make it possible by some syntax. Such that

	someint = 42
	pr_info("%d}E\n", someint)

emits

	42E

(I'm open to use a different "end-of-fmt-specifier" char, a } might
confuse source editors when highlighting matching braces. Maybe '#'?

This idea could be transferred to %p, too, which then lift the
limitation that some strings cannot easily be produced by printk et al.
(Of course this makes the format string parsing still more complicated
which I expect you won't like.) This would make it possible then to
adapt drivers/staging/speakup/speakup_bns.c before introducing the
format for error ints.

> I see this as a warning that we should not play with fire.
> There might be a reason why all format modifiers are put
> between % and the format identifier.

AFAIK they are put after the format specifier in the kernel to still be
able to benefit from the compiler's printf attribute.

>>> still prefer making it %pE, both because it's easier to convert integers
>>> to ERR_PTRs than having to worry about the type of PTR_ERR() being long
>>> and not int, and because alphanumerics after %p have been ignored for a
>>> long time (10 years?) whether or not those characters have been
>>> recognized as a %p extension, so nobody relies on %pE putting an E after
>>> the %p output. It also keeps the non-standard extensions in the same
>>> "namespace", so to speak.
>>
>>> Oh, 'E' is taken, well, make it 'e' then.
>>
>> I like having %pe to print error valued pointers. Then maybe we could
>> have both %de for ints and %pe for pointers. :-)
> 
> I would prefer to avoid %pe. It would make sense only when the value
> really contains error id.

The same holds true for %dE. Something has to happen if an int is passed
that isn't an error code. I'm emitting it as is in my patch, the same
could be done for a pointer.

> It means that it has to be used as:
> 
>     if (IS_ERR(p)) {
>        pr_warn(...);
> 
> The error path might handle the error using PTR_ERR() also
> on other locations. Also PTR_ERR() will make it clear that we
> are trying to print the error code.

I suggest to postpone this until we have %dE. (But I consider using %de
instead as then if we later chose that %pe is a nice idea they can use
the same modifier.)

Best regards
Uwe



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