linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] net: Replace the ternary conditional operator with min()

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Message-ID: <ZHW9J/MkJs2svYsG@shell.armlinux.org.uk>
Date:   Tue, 30 May 2023 10:08:55 +0100
From:   "Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@...linux.org.uk>
To:     Lu Hongfei <luhongfei@...o.com>
Cc:     Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>,
        Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@...il.com>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
        Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,
        Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
        "open list:ETHERNET PHY LIBRARY" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        open list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        opensource.kernel@...o.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: Replace the ternary conditional operator with min()

On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 04:45:30PM +0800, Lu Hongfei wrote:
> It would be better to replace the traditional ternary conditional
> operator with min()

I don't think this is any "better". It's not really a "let's return the
minimum of two values" even though that is what it ends up functionally
being.

Semantically, it's "Is there an error? Yes, then return the error.
Otherwise return success" where an error in the kernel is defined as a
negative integer and success as generally zero, or sometimes a small
positive integer.

Replacing these with "min()" makes the code _less_ readable.

-- 
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