All of lore.kernel.org
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
To: Clemens Ladisch <clemens@ladisch.de>,
	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	"Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
Subject: [PATCH] char: hpet: Use flexible-array member
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 17:53:26 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200120235326.GA29231@embeddedor.com> (raw)

Old code in the kernel uses 1-byte and 0-byte arrays to indicate the
presence of a "variable length array":

struct something {
    int length;
    u8 data[1];
};

struct something *instance;

instance = kmalloc(sizeof(*instance) + size, GFP_KERNEL);
instance->length = size;
memcpy(instance->data, source, size);

There is also 0-byte arrays. Both cases pose confusion for things like
sizeof(), CONFIG_FORTIFY_SOURCE, etc.[1] Instead, the preferred mechanism
to declare variable-length types such as the one above is a flexible array
member[2] which need to be the last member of a structure and empty-sized:

struct something {
        int stuff;
        u8 data[];
};

Also, 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
unadvertenly introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

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

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
---
 drivers/char/hpet.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/char/hpet.c b/drivers/char/hpet.c
index 9ac6671bb514..aed2c45f7968 100644
--- a/drivers/char/hpet.c
+++ b/drivers/char/hpet.c
@@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ struct hpets {
 	unsigned long hp_delta;
 	unsigned int hp_ntimer;
 	unsigned int hp_which;
-	struct hpet_dev hp_dev[1];
+	struct hpet_dev hp_dev[];
 };
 
 static struct hpets *hpets;
-- 
2.23.0


             reply	other threads:[~2020-01-21  0:14 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-01-20 23:53 Gustavo A. R. Silva [this message]
2020-01-23 18:25 ` [PATCH] char: hpet: Use flexible-array member Greg Kroah-Hartman
2020-01-23 18:46   ` Gustavo A. R. Silva
2020-01-23 18:56     ` Greg Kroah-Hartman

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20200120235326.GA29231@embeddedor.com \
    --to=gustavo@embeddedor.com \
    --cc=arnd@arndb.de \
    --cc=clemens@ladisch.de \
    --cc=gregkh@linuxfoundation.org \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.