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char: virtio: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

PATCH New Gustavo A. R. Silva 1 participant 1 message Feb 11, 2020

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PATCH 1/1 char: virtio: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

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")

---
 drivers/char/virtio_console.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
drivers/char/virtio_console.c +1 -1
index fbeb71953526..a136239e4c14 100644
@@ -125,7 +125,7 @@ struct port_buffer {
 	unsigned int sgpages;
 
 	/* sg is used if spages > 0. sg must be the last in is struct */
-	struct scatterlist sg[0];
+	struct scatterlist sg[];
 };
 
 /*
Signature · 1 line
2.25.0