Re: [patch 00/43] ktimer reworked

[Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 08:22:01AM -0800, Ray Lee wrote:
> On 12/1/05, Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
> > The human language is a bit more complicated than this (at least English
> > and related languages). Depending on the context a word can have different
> > meanings, e.g. if you ask an athlete what "timeout" means, you'll get a
> > different answer than you would get from an engineer.
> 
> Actually, no you won't. The athlete will say "A timeout? Something out
> of the ordinary happened, and coach wants me to go to the sidelines to
> talk." Timeouts are unexpected and exceptional, whether you're an
> athlete or a piece of code. On the other hand, they have a timer that
> everyone *expects* to expire at the end of the quarter or game.
> 
> Ray, who is both an athlete and a native English speaker, who thinks
> the naming is the clearest of anything to come across this list in
> ages.

rmk, also a native English speaker, agrees with Ray, Thomas and Ingo.
As does dictionary.reference.com's definitions of timeout and timer:

 timeout

  A period of time after which an error condition is raised if some event
  has not occured. A common example is sending a message. If the receiver
  does not acknowledge the message within some preset timeout period, a
  transmission error is assumed to have occured.

 timer

  a timepiece that measures a time interval and signals its end

Hence, timers have the implication that they are _expected_ to expire.
Timeouts have the implication that their expiry is an exceptional
condition.

So can we stop rehashing this stupid discussion?

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 Serial core
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