On Mon, 2009-04-27 at 16:32 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Mon, 27 Apr 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > > I left the commentary about "readers" and "writers", because in many > > ways it's correct, and what the code actually does is very much to > > emulate a reader-writer lock. I put quotes around the uses in the > > comments to high-light that it largely _acts_ as a reader-writer lock. > > Btw, I think it was Paul who pointed out that technically it's probably > better to call them "local" and "global" lockers instead of "readers" and > "writers". exclusive vs non-exclusive is what the literature would call them in most cases I think. > That also probably clarifies the rules on when you use one over the other > (ie reading off all the statistics is a "global" operation, as is > obviously replacing the tables). > > Of course, "readers" and "writers" is something most Linux lock people are > more used to. Or "brlock" for the old-timers, but that involves a heavy > dose of bad taste. The new use is much nicer, especially since it never > takes the global lock on _all_ cpu's (which was really a killer in so > many ways). > > Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
