linux-kernel - Re: [GIT PULL] treewide conversion to sizeof

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Date:   Sun, 8 Dec 2019 15:53:37 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>
Cc:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Pankaj Bharadiya <pankaj.laxminarayan.bharadiya@...el.com>,
        Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] treewide conversion to sizeof_member() for v5.5-rc1

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 3:40 PM <joe@...ches.com> wrote:
>
> Call it what the standard calls it.

... or, you know, call it what the individual parts of a data
structure is called in computer science in general: fields.

That really is standard naming too, Joe. Just to quote Wikipedia

  "A record (also called tuple or struct) is an aggregate data
structure. A record is a value that contains other values, typically
in fixed number and sequence and typically indexed by names. The
elements of records are usually called fields or members"

see?

Do we name things by their C implementation, or by their generic CS
names? Sometimes one, sometimes the other.

But the fact is, "field" really isn't wrong AND IT IS WHAT WE ALREADY USE.

And last time I pointed out that at least according to a quick grep,
we use "field" a whole lot more than we use "member".

Possibly exactly because that's the typical generic name.

             Linus