password API needed

[Edan Idzerda]

On Wed, 20 May 1998, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:

> oops, just spoke with jeremy: vector function tables with NULL entries are
> bad programming practice.  therefore, this is going.  all functions will

>From linux/fs/smbfs/inode.c:

    static struct super_operations smb_sops =
    {
	    smb_read_inode,         /* read inode */
	    NULL,                   /* write inode */
	    smb_put_inode,          /* put inode */
	    smb_delete_inode,       /* delete inode */
	    smb_notify_change,      /* notify change */
	    smb_put_super,          /* put superblock */
	    NULL,                   /* write superblock */
	    smb_statfs,             /* stat filesystem */
	    NULL                    /* remount filesystem */
    };

I believe that a NULL function pointer in Linux's VFS layer means
"give me default behavior."  Solaris on the other hand uses 
actual dummy functions like fs_nosys or fs_sync to do this.
For as many of the things that Linux does right, maybe this is not
one of them :)

Somebody prove me wrong because I'd love to hear it.  You'll give away
your expertise in area that could be helpful to me :)

- edan