On Tuesday 24 January 2012, Pekka Enberg wrote: > On Tue, 2012-01-24 at 13:40 -0200, Marcelo Tosatti wrote: > > What is the practical advantage of a syscall, again? > > Why do you ask? The advantage for this particular case is not needing to > add ioctls() for configuration and keeping the file read/write ABI > simple. The two are obviously equivalent and there is no reason to avoid ioctl in general. However I agree that the syscall would be better in this case, because that is what we tend to use for core kernel functionality, while character devices tend to be used for I/O device drivers that need stuff like enumeration and permission management. Arnd -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>