[PATCH] lib: objagg: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array member

[PATCH] lib: objagg: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array member

[Gustavo A. R. Silva]

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
introduced in C99:

struct foo {
        int stuff;
        struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
inadvertenly introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
---
 lib/objagg.c | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lib/objagg.c b/lib/objagg.c
index 576be22e86de..668a2c0a88ac 100644
--- a/lib/objagg.c
+++ b/lib/objagg.c
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ struct objagg_hints_node {
 	struct objagg_hints_node *parent;
 	unsigned int root_id;
 	struct objagg_obj_stats_info stats_info;
-	unsigned long obj[0];
+	unsigned long obj[];
 };
 
 static struct objagg_hints_node *
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ struct objagg_obj {
 				* including nested objects
 				*/
 	struct objagg_obj_stats stats;
-	unsigned long obj[0];
+	unsigned long obj[];
 };
 
 static unsigned int objagg_obj_ref_inc(struct objagg_obj *objagg_obj)
-- 
2.25.0

Re: [PATCH] lib: objagg: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array member

[Jiri Pirko]

Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 09:53:56PM CET, gustavo@embeddedor.com wrote:
>The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
>extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
>variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
>introduced in C99:
>
>struct foo {
>        int stuff;
>        struct boo array[];
>};
>
>By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
>in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
>will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
>inadvertenly introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.
>
>This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.
>
>[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
>[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
>[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")
>
>Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>

Acked-by: Jiri Pirko <jiri@mellanox.com>

Re: [PATCH] lib: objagg: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array member

[David Miller]

From: "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 14:53:56 -0600

> The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
> extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
> variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
> introduced in C99:
> 
> struct foo {
>         int stuff;
>         struct boo array[];
> };
> 
> By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
> in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
> will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
> inadvertenly introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.
> 
> This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.
> 
> [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
> [2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
> [3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")
> 
> Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>

Applied to net-next.