On Sun, 6 Jul 2025 at 22:06, Alejandro Colomar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> - p += snprintf(p, ID_STR_LENGTH - (p - name), "%07u", s->size);
> + p = seprintf(p, e, "%07u", s->size);
I am *really* not a fan of introducing yet another random non-standard
string function.
This 'seprintf' thing really seems to be a completely made-up thing.
Let's not go there. It just adds more confusion - it may be a simpler
interface, but it's another cogniitive load thing, and honestly, that
"beginning and end" interface is not great.
I think we'd be better off with real "character buffer" interfaces,
and they should be *named* that way, not be yet another "random
character added to the printf family".
The whole "add a random character" thing is a disease. But at least
with printf/fprintf/vprintf/vsnprintf/etc, it's a _standard_ disease,
so people hopefully know about it.
So I really *really* don't like things like seprintf(). It just makes me go WTF?
Interfaces that have worked for us are things like "seq_printf()", which
(a) has sane naming, not "add random characters"
(b) has real abstractions (in that case 'struct seq_file') rather
than adding random extra arguments to the argument list.
and we do have something like that in 'struct seq_buf'. I'm not
convinced that's the optimal interface, but I think it's *better*.
Because it does both encapsulate a proper "this is my buffer" type,
and has a proper "this is a buffer operation" function name.
So I'd *much* rather people would try to convert their uses to things
like that, than add random letter combinations.
Linus
