linux-kernel - Re: [GIT PULL] tracing: Cleanups for v6.17

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Message-ID: <CAHk-=wgnnEmiaUjc8nQse4rANDcFBKEWcqbwroe+fHBEGjjncQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2025 15:28:32 -0700
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>, 
	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] tracing: Cleanups for v6.17

On Sun, 3 Aug 2025 at 06:54, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org> wrote:
>
>      There's several arguments that are "unsigned long" and
>   even "unsigned int" that are either and address or a mask. It is easier to
>   understand if they were printed using hexadecimal instead of decimal.

I suspect you are basically being influenced by seeing *existing* odd
cases, and you'll find that a lot of people use 'unsigned int' for
plain integers where decimal representation makes sense - but because
those printed out naturally before, you didn't react to them.

Doing a quick grep shows that it's generally almost a tie between
"print as hex" vs "print as decimal".

Yes, %x being more common, but not *that* much more common:

  $ git grep '".*%[0-9lz]*u.*"' | wc -l
  45910
  $ git grep '".*%[0-9lz]*x.*"' | wc -l
  62072

so at least there it's a 57% / 43% split, not really dominated by one
case over the other.

(Obviously that might trigger non-print formats, I'm not claiming
scientific rigor here. Also, ).

I suspect you'll now find cases where the new format is much less
legible than the old decimal one.

You might get better results by actually looking at the values.

           Linus