[spaceywilly]

A nice practice that I try to follow it to always spell out what any Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) the first time they are used. Then from that point onwards the simple TLA can be used.

In this case, BPF (shorthand for eBPF), stands for Extended Berkley Packet Filter. It’s a relatively new feature in the kernel that allows attaching small programs at certain “hook points” in the kernel (for example, when some syscall is called). These programs can pass information into userspace (like who is calling the syscall), and make decisions (whether to allow the call to proceed).

More info here https://ebpf.io/what-is-ebpf/

[corbet]

We do try to spell things out and/or link them in LWN articles to make the context available, but some things we just have to assume.

Additionally, spelling out "Berkeley Packet Filter" is not going to help any readers here; BPF is far removed from the days when its sole job was filtering packets, and that name will not tell readers anything about why BPF is important in the Linux kernel.