The kernel version is a value not a field. You're welcome to assume forever that there will be a version field, if it ever becomes the case that this simply ma

The kernel version is a value not a field. You're welcome to assume forever that there will be a version field, if it ever becomes the case that this simply makes no sense anymore then a sensible dummy value will be placed in[0] [0] - http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1710.3/02487.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1710.3/02487.html "There's a number of fields in /proc/<pid>/stat that are printed out as zeroes, simply because they don't even *exist* in the kernel any more, or because showing them was a mistake (typically an information leak). But the numbers got replaced by zeroes, so that the code that used to parse the fields still works."