From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: julia.lawall@lip6.fr (Julia Lawall) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 21:35:12 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Cocci] Remove unnecessary null pointer checks? In-Reply-To: <530DD06F.4090703@users.sourceforge.net> References: <5307CAA2.8060406@users.sourceforge.net> <530A086E.8010901@users.sourceforge.net> <530A72AA.3000601@users.sourceforge.net> <530B5FB6.6010207@users.sourceforge.net> <530C5E18.1020800@users.sourceforge.net> <530CD2C4.4050903@users.sourceforge.net> <530CF8FF.8080600@users.sourceforge.net> <530DD06F.4090703@users.sourceforge.net> Message-ID: To: cocci@systeme.lip6.fr List-Id: cocci@systeme.lip6.fr > I get an interesting result for example. Do you find it useful? I checks on the three examples. They seem technically correct, in that the called function does immediately do a null test on the argument value. Personally, I still think that the null test at the call site conveys useful information, so I would rather have it there, but others may think differently. On the other hand, you should not be using linux-stable when working on the Linux kernel. Patches should apply to linux-next, ie the very latest version of all of the code. If you are convinced that dropping the null tests is a good idea, then you can submit the patch that makes the change to the relevant maintainers and mailing lists. Use scripts/get_maintainers.pl in the Linux kernel to find out who to sent it to. And study the documentation on submitting patches very carefully. > The log file contains messages like 'EXN:Invalid_argument("equal: abstract > value")'. Do they need further considerations? This is an unfortunate constraint on the use of PCRE regular expressions. I will try to track it down. Thanks for the report. > Is this intermediate source code analysis result good enough to expand the > constructive discussion to a mailing list like "kernel janitors"? I don't think people on the mailing list want to discuss the issue in a general sense. They just want patches, and may comment on them. julia