Re: [KJ] memory zeroing macros

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com>]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:

> On Sun, 11 Feb 2007, Greg KH wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 03:34:34PM -0500, burns.ethan@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 04:32:11AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > > > or maybe this really is just not worth the effort.  who knows?
> > >
> > > I don't think its worth the effort.  Changing the name on this
> > > wouldn't add any readability.  memset(dest, 0, len) is very
> > > clear, in my opinion.  Also, there's nothing really error prone
> > > about it...  I see no advantage.
> >
> > Not true at all, 0 and len get switched a lot accidentally.  See
> > the archives for times people have swept the kernel tree to fix
> > this issue up.
>
> I agree with you here, Greg, about accidentally switching the args
> to memset(). However just because someone (I've done this in the
> past, damn hard to debug since you don't expect to make this silly
> mistake) can do:
>
>   if (x = 0)  { }
>
> doesn't mean that we should discourage if statements.
>
> The macros from the wiki page add yet another set of
> macros/functions that someone has to learn.

i agree that those extra macros are overkill, except possibly in the
case of a simple memzero(), given that other developers seem to
re-invent it on an occasional basis.

but i'll leave this decision to someone else.

rday

-- 
====================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
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