It is not about consistency of the API in itself but about consistency
with the rest of the kernel. Cf. skb_get vs. get_unaligned and many
more. I for one immediately think of "something is having its
reference count incremented here" when I come across a something_get
when reading code.
I don't know of such a convention being documented anywhere. But for an
overkill of examples of "get" as prefix and suffix, grep for get_ and
_get( in include/. The same convention exists IME with "put" that
either writes a value or drops a reference.
Sorry for bringing this up so late but it is IMO not a trivial point.
--
Stefan Richter
-=====-==-=- =-== -====
http://arcgraph.de/sr/
--