Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Fix confused output for alias properties

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 12:45:43PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Il 16/09/2014 12:37, Michael S. Tsirkin ha scritto:
> > str really should be for free-form strings.
> > It makes as much sense to call it as string
> 
> Yes, that's why I said drive->str is a degradation.  The question is,
> how important is that degradation?
> 
> > as it is to call an integer a string because you type
> > a string of characters to specify it.
> 
> I disagree.  This is true for the command line, and for historical
> reasons it is also true for device-add, but the newer QOM commands are
> type-safe.  You cannot pass an integer as a JSON string '123' to qom-set
> or object-add, for example.
> 
> Paolo

Right so types should be explicit.
If an arbitrary string isn't allowed, this should be documented.
It's not great as is: what's the format for macaddr? AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF?
aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff? aabbccddeeff? 0xaabbccddeeff?
But just saying "string" is going in the wrong direction imho.

-- 
MST