On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 02:54:13PM +1100, Russell Currey wrote: > Symbolic macros are unintuitive and hard to read, whereas octal constants > are much easier to interpret. Replace macros for the basic permission > flags (user/group/other read/write/execute) with numeric constants > instead, across the whole powerpc tree. >
I know Linus said otherwise, but I wonder if the churn is worth it. At user mode (do man 2 chmod), these constants are used frequently, even with chmod the command we use chmod a+r equivalents or chmod u+r. My big concern with numbers is how do you know you did not turn on the sticky bit for a file? Can you imagine if someone used 0x644 or 0x444 would we catch it? Not resisting, but thinking if the churn and what follows might be OK. Balbir Singh.
