A change to string encoding

[John Dennis]

Steve Grubb wrote:
> Can you encode data structures in it? The kernel developer at the time wanted 
> something that was either already in the kernel or something that could be 
> implemented in a couple lines of code and something that works for any kind 
> of encoding that needed to be done. So, I think minimal amount of code and 
> maximum flexibility is what drove the decision.
>   
The comment was *not* about encoding data structures, rather it was 
about string encoding.

I have provided code in the past which encodes a string according to the 
ISO C99 standard. It does not tax the kernel, use excessive resources, 
or is complicated in any sense whatsoever (it's just a per character 
table lookup) and wraps the result in double quotes.

Yes, this would change the output of the kernel audit data, which does 
have the potential to break existing user code. However, it's often been 
stated only the official audit libraries should ever be used to read 
audit data and if that recommendation still holds then the audit 
libraries should be capable of gracefully handling either the old or new 
format providing a transparent transition.

I hope at some point we can start to address this reoccurring issue.

-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>

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