From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16881.43936.632734.780383@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 12:25:52 +1100 From: Paul Mackerras Subject: Re: Extend clear_page by an order parameter In-Reply-To: <20050121164353.6f205fbc.akpm@osdl.org> References: <20050108135636.6796419a.davem@davemloft.net> <16881.33367.660452.55933@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <16881.40893.35593.458777@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <20050121164353.6f205fbc.akpm@osdl.org> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Andrew Morton Cc: clameter@sgi.com, davem@davemloft.net, hugh@veritas.com, linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Andrew Morton writes: > It is, actually, from the POV of the page allocator. It's a "higher order > page" and is controlled by a struct page*, just like a zero-order page... So why is the function that gets me one of these "higher order pages" called "get_free_pages" with an "s"? :) Christoph's patch is bigger than it needs to be because he has to change all the occurrences of clear_page(x) to clear_page(x, 0), and then he has to change a lot of architectures' clear_page functions to be called _clear_page instead. If he picked a different name for the "clear a higher order page" function it would end up being less invasive as well as less confusing. The argument that clear_page is called that because it clears a higher order page won't wash; all the clear_page implementations in his patch are perfectly capable of clearing any contiguous set of 2^order pages (oops, I mean "zero-order pages"), not just a "higher order page". Paul. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: aart@kvack.org