Re: p = kmalloc(sizeof(*p), )

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk, penberg@cs.Helsinki.FI,
	viro@ftp.linux.org.uk, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	torvalds@osdl.org
Subject: Re: p = kmalloc(sizeof(*p), )
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 10:59:39 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20050920105939.3c9c5e39.akpm@osdl.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1127239361.7763.3.camel@localhost.localdomain>

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Maw, 2005-09-20 at 10:11 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > >  Since some of the other major contributors to the kernel appear to
> > >  also disagree with the statement, I think that the entry in
> > >  CodingStyle must be removed.
> > 
> > Nobody has put forward a decent reason for doing so.  
> 
> I've seen five decent reasons so far. Which of the reasons on the thread
> do you disagree with and why ?
> 

umm, the three reasons which you deleted from the mail to which you're
replying?

> "I want to grep for
> initialisations" is pretty pointless because a) it won't catch everything
> anyway and b) most structures are allocated and initialised at a single
> place and many of those which aren't should probably be converted to do
> that anyway.
>
> The broader point is that you're trying to optimise for the wrong thing. 
> We should optimise for those who read code, not for those who write it.
>

If you look back, your five reasons tend to address modifiability, not
readability.