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Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 22:58:23 +1000 (EST)
From: Bruce Evans <brde@optusnet.com.au>
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To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
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Cc: arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Interrupt Descriptions 
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On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> In message <20091001090218.L21015@delplex.bde.org>, Bruce Evans writes:
>
>> Interrupt names should be no longer than 4 (5 works sometimes) characters so
>> that they can be displayed by systat -v.
>
> I disagree.  Bytes are cheaper now than they were on a PDP11.  We should
> use as many as is necessary to convey sensible information.

s/should/shall/ then.  It is the API that interrupt names must be no
longer than 4.  You can disagree with this being the best API but not
with what it is.

Using many bytes here results in no information being conveyed in some
cases, not sensible information, when the long description is truncated
to 3-4 characters to fit in the available space.

Bruce